Peeling off the rain suits and leaving the wool socks in the cabin has felt great these past few days. But the arrival of warm, summer weather is signaling us that the time for changing fishing patterns are upon us.
Water levels are high on both Winnie and Cutfoot, in many areas, docks are level with the water line and boat ramps are flooded. The high water, combined with cool weather has kept surface temperatures cool. Tuesday, the surface water temperature had finally risen above 50 degrees; it was 51 on the big lake and about 54 degrees on Cutfoot Sioux.
These cooler than average water conditions, have kept the water clear, particularly on Big Winnie. One of the area guides, Dale Anderson said; “I was in Tamarack Bay and notice that the water looked like it was clearing up. I dropped a jig to the bottom in 9 feet of water and could see it plain as day.”
Cool, clear water was fine when the wind was blowing and the rain was falling. But under the bright sunshine, especially without a breeze, fish activity has shifted almost entirely to the twilight hours. Travis Krug and his crew have been fishing the evening bite all week, Krug says; “We found a weed flat in Cutfoot that’s been holding walleyes ever since we arrived last Saturday. We don’t get many during the daytime and when we do, they’re usually slot-fish. But as soon as the sun falls below the tree line, the action picks up and the number of eating size fish increases."
You can probably guess what our advice to guests arriving soon will be; focus on fishing walleyes during early morning, late evening and whenever cloud cover and wind encourages daytime movement.
Another strategy that will help improve daytime walleye action is to move deeper and use slow, natural presentations.
Even over the fishing opener, our guests were commenting about finding fish deeper than usual. It was common then to hear reports of good catches coming from 16 to 18 feet of water. Early June is historically a time that walleye migrate deeper and it makes a lot of sense to start looking at deep water early this year.
One indicator that fish may be moving deeper is the “hot bite” that occurred in Tamarack Bay, along the Mississippi river Channel just before Memorial Weekend. Over the years, we’ve observed that when large schools of walleye migrate though that area, there’s a short-lived peak in the fishing action.
Heavy traffic and the fishes own natural instincts to migrate deeper combine to encourage many of those fish to move toward mid-lake structure. During the early stages of this movement, there’s a lull in the action because fish become scattered as they travel across large flats. It won’t be long though before they begin appearing on mid-lake structure.
We’ll be encouraging folks to start using Lindy Rigs tipped with lively leeches for triggering strikes in deep water. “Power Corking” is an aggressive fishing system that combines scanning structure with your sonar to locate fish with the use of slip bobbers.
This system allows you to present natural appearing live bait to specifically targeted fish. If you haven’t tried it, now is the time to get ready for it; it really works.
Here’s a link to one instructional video that gives anglers a good idea about how to get into the Power Corking game.
Panfish, crappies in particular will be in the news this week. For them, the sunshine is an advantage and as surface temperatures approach 60 degrees, we’ll see migrations toward shallow spawning areas. There have already been reports about panfish being spotted in shallow water. In fact, there are a handful of reports about good catches of them too. The weather forecast appears to be playing into the hands of crappie fishing; let’s hope for a period of warmth and stability, that is the key to good crappie spawning.
By the way, did you know that you can select out only male fish for harvest? Yes you can and it’s really easy.
During spring, spawning male crappies turn dark black while females remain silvery in appearance. Any conservation minded angler can easily slip the black colored fish into the livewell, while releasing the silver covered females to complete their spawning process.