8/4/24 Report

We never casted for walleyes before so thought we would see how that works. Bought 2 dozen crawlers and set up on the east side of Crib Reef before sunrise. We used various colors of crawler harnesses with 1 oz weights.
It was a feeding frenzy! I couldn't sit down for 90 minutes because we were landing so many fish. None of them were walleyes but my wife had a blast fighting catfish and freshwater drum.
I also tried the Acme hyper rattle and Kalin search baits there. Had one hit on the search bait but nothing at all on the hyper rattle.
We could see a pack of 40 boats over at D can so when our crawlers were gone, we moved over there and started perching with spreaders and shiners. It was hot by then though, so the bite was slow. We caught a few perch there but decided to head back west.
We would motor for a bit to cool off in the breeze and then stop and pick up a couple perch and then motor some more and repeat. After several hours were at A can. My wife did land an 18" walleye there on a perch rig. Ended the day keeping 21 perch, 1 walleye, 8 tasty drum and 8 catfish.

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Originally Posted by gb1234

We never casted for walleyes before so thought we would see how that works. Bought 2 dozen crawlers and set up on the east side of Crib Reef before sunrise. We used various colors of crawler harnesses with 1 oz weights.
It was a feeding frenzy! I couldn't sit down for 90 minutes because we were landing so many fish. None of them were walleyes but my wife had a blast fighting catfish and freshwater drum.
I also tried the Acme hyper rattle and Kalin search baits there. Had one hit on the search bait but nothing at all on the hyper rattle.
We could see a pack of 40 boats over at D can so when our crawlers were gone, we moved over there and started perching with spreaders and shiners. It was hot by then though, so the bite was slow. We caught a few perch there but decided to head back west.
We would motor for a bit to cool off in the breeze and then stop and pick up a couple perch and then motor some more and repeat after several hours were at A can. My wife did land an 18" walleye there on a perch rig. Ended the day keeping 21 perch, 1 walleye, 8 tasty drum and 8 catfish.

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the eyes haven't been on the reefs for months. they have moved out to open water. we always did good from just south of the west sister island to northwest of the island. I'm not sure which intake I'm talking about but it's just north of cooly canal and at times fishing around it has paid off.

the way we always fished was to use a 3/8 oz to 5/8 oz weight forward spinner and let them out with spinning gear for around 100' to 150' then set our rods un against the gunnel and drift along letting the rocking of the boat do all the work. if things were too slow we adjusted our leads shorter or longer until we caught more fish.

one day we wasn't getting anything and wasn't seeing any nets. I had bought a full card of 1/4 oz Erie Dearies that I had never never used. frustrated I put 1 on and set it out and started tying another one on my other rod when I got a hard hit on the one I had out. and before I got my second rig out I caught another one. I handed them out to the other 3 guys who hadn't caught a fish. 2 hours later we pulled lines with our limit in the boat and most were above average size fish. we started across the parking lot carrying our cooler. some friends came up and wanted to see our catch as they hadn't caught anything. the next 30 to 40 minutes we were showing our catch to a lot of skunked fishermen. some had managed to catch a few. but that trip the fish were so shallow everyone was fishing under them.

Thanks for all those tips! Can't wait to give it a go.