Lake “windy”bago howled for most of the week with strong north and westerly winds. The water clarity went from clear to extremely stain over the week, and the cold outside temperature drove water temperatures down into the 70 degree mark.
The FLW walleye tour was here this week, and I fished the entire week with the tour. I have so much information; it may be difficult to get you a refined report. But here goes.
Crank baits are the key methods to produce walleyes this week. We ran live bait rigs, harnesses, jigs, and tipped cranks with crawlers and not a single walleye was caught on these methods during the week. However, several of the pros were doing well with harnesses after they located the schools of fish with crank baits. Some of the pros including Ted Takasaki, Perry Good, Scott Steele, and others were pitching shorelines in Asylum Bay, but none of these guys had big weights on those particular days. Over the weekend the live bait bite reemerged as water clarity improved.
Trolling in Asylum Bay and out to Garlic Island was very strong. Two methods were being employed in this region; one was trolling in 5-7 feet of water over weeds with short leads behind the boards (10-35 feet). Out near Garlic Island, a strong crank bait bite was occurring running the baits at about 100 feet behind the board. Black and gold or perch colored baits produced the most fish.
Roes/Stony Point was giving up walleyes of the 13-17” variety on crank baits run over the shallow areas in 6 foot or less of water depth. The distance behind the board was minimal (12 feet or less).
The North Shore Country Club had a great Sauger bite working. We nailed over 12 pounds of Sauger on Thursday (all swimming). The walleyes are also in the mix and have cookie cutter size of 14-17 inches. We used lead core on these fish at approximately 80-120 feet with no planner board at 2.2 mphs. This is a size 5 flicker shad bite in black and gold or size 5 shad rap in purple hues.
Little Black Bird Island and Stevens’ Reef had a reef bite going especially on the windy side points. This again was size 5 crank baits in white run at 1.9 mphs or casted on the top of the reef and retrieved back to the boat.
Mud bite: There were four distinct areas which were producing larger eyes. These spots will be hot for part of the day and then shut down. Walleyes are very deep in the water column right now.
Spot #1. Center of the lake directly east of the Fox River Mouth
Spot #2 Stockbridge area in 16-19 feet of water
Spot #3 North Shore Country Club (see above)
Spot #4 East of the Jesuit/Fahrney’s Point
The weed lines in Fond du Lac are giving up eyes on harnesses run with a slit shot and crawler. In addition, the shallow water break lines are producing quality fish.
Overall, it seemed the walleye were shallow first thing in the morning and moved out to the deeper surrounding water by 10 am and then headed shallower again around 3-4 pm. I saw this trend at Asylum Bay, The Jesuit, and at Stony Point.
There were very few perch fisherman out this week, partly due to the strong winds. The best perch bite observed was near Stuart’s Landscaping (south of Subway Road) in North Fond du Lac. We also saw quite a few boats in the Minawa Beach area, but we had no reports of successes or failures in this area.
Catfish are very active on the west shore. Some of them are even hammering the crank baits. Pike can be found in weedy areas. There were also some very aggressive small mouths on Long Point.
Whew, that should keep you going this week in your hunt for fish. Please send your reports to me at [email protected]. Remember to be versatile, because these fish are pretty fickle right now. Several of the pros stopped me and mentioned how much they liked Myfishingpartner.com, and how they had used the information in their preparation for the tour event in the weeks leading up to their arrival. Glad we could help!
Most of our behind the scenes site updates have been completed. We will be installing a few neat features in the coming weeks including the Google Earth Module to make finding partners easier. Stay tuned. Thanks for your patience as we had a few days off line last week.
