4/29 report

The afternoon wind forecast I was hoping for came through. It was a beautiful afternoon on the lake today and the fish cooperated too.

We worked the area near the line NW of Kelly's. We had 5 in the boat before we could get the entire spread out. We caught 21 and brought the smallest 12 in for the freezer/fryer. We fished from 1:00 to 5:00.

The program that worked was Bandits unassisted 90 to 110 back at 1.2 mph. And the riggers oscillating 25 to 30. We had mostly post spawn females but there were a few males mixed in. It looks like there staging to put on the feed. Hopefully this next blow won't mess them up. We were fishing slower and deeper than what had been working. There was allot of radio chatter singing the blues and why we adjusted right out.

We had 3 over 27 with one fish Ohio all on a chartreuse/orange Long A. Once again it was oscillating 25 to 30. This was the clear winner and accounted for 6 of our biggest fish. We had 2 on a gold supper rogue on riggers also.

The best Bandit colors was Taco Salad, Orange Crush, Sun Spot, and a Blue with chartreus belly I can't find the name (I only have one but will pick up a few if I can find them, as it has been a stead producer lately).

I will be land locked until after the next blow. Good luck to everyone going out tomorrow!

Thanks for your report. We fished the Vermilion dump tonight. Came in early as we saw the storms coming on radar. Nothing to right home about for our trip. All males 70-80 back being the best setbacks. 2.0 sog purples and orange being the best colors. Nets were going, but a slow bite.

Thanks for the post and good job on figuring out the bite yesterday Mike.Couple questions, what do you mean by riggers oscillating 25 to 30.Does that mean you caught fish on your downriggers between 25-30ft down?
Also,how many rods do you run, max when you have a full boat,and how do you run them?

Hi Bob,
Oscillating means we have the down riggers programed to come up and down automatically between 25 and 30 feet. We can also control the speed of the rise and fall. Right now in this cold water we have them moving down to 30 slowly and pausing for 30 seconds, then rising rapidly to 25 and pause for 45 seconds. The rise often triggers a strike. We use the riggers like this to cover the water column. We have 3 riggers on the boat but only use 2 this time of year. Come summer we will work all 3 hard.

Also the Fish Hawk probe is on the rigger so we are always watching temps and currents down below. We will work it up through the spread periodically looking for warm/cold zones. This really helps.

Right now we typically run 5 short boards on each side and 2 riggers as the fish seem to be moving up and down allot in the water column do to temp changes. This way we keep baits throughout the water column looking for the more aggressive fish. When the temps stabilize we will switch to the big boards and add rods.

NOTE: Typically we use the lengths back on the short boards to cover everything down to 22 feet, one rigger oscillating 25 to 30 and the other oscillating 33 to 38/bottom to start. Then pull everything close to the target zone once the fish tell us, lol. We stay flexible and never try to assume anything, the fish have their own little pea brains and do some crazy things!

I hope this answered your questions. It is always good to hear from you.

Thanks for clarifying how you run the rods in your boat Mike.Interesting,on how you can use those riggers to cover the bottom of the water column.No wonder you do so well catching fish.
Fortunately,the direction of our 3 day blow is mostly out of the west.That doesn't wreck the fishing as much as a North thru east blow.My buddy finally has his boat in and looks like we will be getting out after this blow.So hoping to join in on the great fishing soon.

Good luck.
It looks like we may get some beautiful weather after the blow.

Tiger,

I've only use riggers for salmon, never walleye. What kind of releases are you using on the riggers for walleyes? Rubberbands and Blacks? Also, what lengths are you running the Bandits from the Down Rigger ball?

Thank you!

We use Blacks or Blacks knock offs. No rubber bands, we just twist the line about 6 times for mono. Generally 30 back.

BTW, we set our releases a little on the tighter side. Preferring to check them regularly. We find the smaller eyes won't trip the release no matter what you do and by setting the release a LITTLE stiffer it helps with the hook ups. Remember walleye don't strike and run, they more like bite hard and hang on. But this requires regularly checking them.