Wind & Weeds
July 19, 2020
James was back again today and this time he brought his father Joe and his friend Mike along as well. With a good SW wind on the water this morning, I was looking forward to trolling and wasted no time getting fishing!
With 4 lines working for us, it wasn’t long before Mike was reeling in his first walleye of the day. It was a high end keeper and hopefully one of many to come! We covered plenty of water in search of more for Mike to take home but were only able to add one other keeper to his limit. It wasn’t for lack of trying as he did have to release a few others that were just too big! Plenty of pike too!
Sometime around noon or so, we decided to change it up and they tried their hand at casting for smallmouth bass. They fished for about 90 minutes or so on several spots and managed only a handful of fish. Despite the action being rather slow, they did boat a few really nice ones before we relocated to try something completely different.
I had made a long run to open water in hopes of drop shotting a few deeper areas. Unfortunately the first couple of spot didn’t pan out when we tried to fish them. I liked the big waves but all the floating weeds made it impossible to get a drift. If we were lucky, the lines stayed clean for about 30 seconds! I had to move to other areas and similar results were had there as well. In the end I just settled for one spot that although had weeds, was somewhat fishable.
The remainder of the day was spent making multiple drifts over the deep water and lots of walleye were landed. Too bad most weren’t in the slot, but Mike did manage to add a couple more keepers to his limit for the day. James was trying to help too, but was only able to catch smallies!
For the last 30 minutes we saw a drop in the winds and the lake flattened out almost completely. If it wasn’t for all the boat traffic, it would have been a mirror! Instead, it felt more like being in a washing machine! I tried to hold them on a small area that seemed loaded with fish but they only managed a couple more short ones before we called it a day.
Despite the difficult fishing conditions at times today, they still caught fish everywhere we went. In the end, Mike was even able to take 4 of the walleye home with him. Looks like he’ll be having fresh fish for dinner tonight!
