This spring fishing started off kinda slow. The lake was super high and the water was very cold. We had a near record late ice off with the ice coming off the lake on May 11. May was wet, windy and cold. It took a couple weeks for things to turn around to heat up. But once they did, boy did the bite get hot! Nice large crappies were biting, albeit in deeper water than is normal for June. Pike were hitting everything everywhere. The bass spawn was late, but the bite was good. And the walleye… best walleye bite ever. People were picking up eater walleyes at 16 and 17 inches along with some monster walleyes for bragging pictures. Lets jump into the report…
Crappie
At first the crappie bite wasn’t good. Partly because we were expecting normal spring patterns. Usually in the spring we fish crappie in the shallows. This year the crappie seemed to prefer a little deeper water. As June continued they slowly moved shallower. Once we figured out the patterns the bite was on! Numerous 13, 14 and even a few 15 inch crappie were caught. The crappie seemed to prefer minnows, but many were caught on wax worms and even leeches.
Bluegills
Bluegills tend to prefer warmer water with lots of sun. May wasn’t sunny and June had a lot of cloudy days. But when the sun did pop out, so did the bluegills. Overall size was good for bluegills this year. Many 10 inchers were caught and several guests reported catching 11 inch blue gills. The blue gills seemed to prefer cut up worms and leeches.
Pike
Everywhere, every color, every lure and hungry.
Walleye
The walleye bite was very good all of June and most of May. The hot spot on the lake was the sand flat out in front of the lodge. Several 28s, 29s and some 30s were caught. Along with the nice large walleyes we had record numbers of 15s, 16s, 17s and 18 inchers caught and eaten this year. The DNR stocking of the lake seems to be helping. Leeches seemed to be outperforming worms this year, but both were best on a crawler harness or lindy rig. Brock landed the monster walleye seen in the above video.
Bass
The bass bite was not great in May. And we had a lot of wind a few days in June, but on the days the wind died down the bass bite has been good so far this year. Crankbaits were hot early in the month, especially crayfish colors such as chili craw. During the middle of the month the soft plastics started to dominate again with 5 inch watermelon red flake being the hot ticket. Currently root beer and pumpkin seems to be best. You can see how we did in 2 hours of fishing last week using homemade senkos in the above video.
Perch
Perch fishing has been bad. Very few jumbo perch have been caught.
