Kellys Island Walleye - 1 July to 3 July

[gqbeagle]

Fished the evening of 1 July leaving from the State Park launch ramp a 6PM. Trolled due north to the red buoy at Gull Island Shoal and turned back once the water started to get shallow. Caught 6 fish in about 2 hours. Half of the fish were bigger than what I have seen for this area (largest was 24 inches). Used spinners/worms with inline weights at speed of 1.5. To comment on a prior thread about use of the livewell, for the first time this year, I had fish turn belly up in the livewell. Not surprising, it was the bigger fish that got riggy while the smaller fish were still lively. Assume high water temperature and heat were to blame. Prior to this, I would have no doubt that a fish from my livewell could be successfully returned to the lake. I have to admit I did "fun fish" once last fall at Huron.

I made it to same ramp Monday morning and launched to find a very strong south west wind with steady 3 footers. I trolled same pattern as the night before only I took a right at the red buoy and followed the north passage. Somewhere between the red Gull Island Shoal and the green Kellys Island Shoal can, I had four hits in the course of about 10 minutes and landed all of them. I trolled all the way to the red buoy at the other end of Kellys Island Shoal and nothing. Under more ideal wave conditions, I would have circled back and hit that area again but I am fishing out of a 16ft Smokercraft and have to respect its limitations and my safety. Same trolling speed and lures. Color did not seem to matter. 18 to 20 inch fish.

Since I only got four fish in the morning, I went out again that night and what a change in conditions. No wind, flat lake, lots of algae and hot. Trolled out to Gull Island Shoal again (same program) and caught my two just west of the buoy and came back. No fun fishing haha.

Tuesday morning saw steady 3 footers out of the north east which changed to east after I was out for an hour. I had no choice but to troll north west due to conditions and after an hour and a half of feeding junk fish, I finally got a hit off the bottom. As I brought the fish to the boat, I could see it was a small walleye so being lazy (and depressed), I just tried to horse him into the boat without the net and of course he got off. At that point I was getting pretty far from Kellys so decided to turn around and head back the other way. More junk fish and getting beat up by the waves so decided to pack it in. Technically, you could say I got skunked.