05-04-2018, 03:47 PM
Fished Willard trolling in a boat from 5pm-dark. Weather was nice. Just enough wind to keep the bugs away. Nice sunset. There were three of us in the boat with 5 rods out. We rotated through many lures and jigs. Water temp was 63. We got no hits all night except for one medium sized wiper that hit and stuck. We spent the most time between the north shore and Pelican beach. We marked a lot of fish between Eagle Beach and Pelican Beach out West a bit in the deeper holes. They were stacked up all over in deeper areas 12-20’ FOW. Almost all were in the bottom half of the water column. It looks about 3-feet off the bottom is the place to be. At least you won’t have to venture far from the pic-nick table on the Saturday gathering to find fish.
The one wiper we picked up was off a light-yellow colored chartreus marabou jig with a small blade in front of it, just being trolled.
We talked with another nice young gentleman and his young boy at the south marina when pulling out. He was in a new Tracker (decked out). He fished in the morning and returned for the evening hours. He caught 1 walleye and 2 wiper all day. He picked them up along the East shore and out next to the island. He was very kind and open with information. He was running worm harnesses with blades near the bottom 30’ behind down riggers. The weird thing is he says he always runs at mach 2.7 even at this time of year. He said he did really well catching wipers last week using the same techniques up between the hog farm and freeway bay.
So it looks like something with blades and some sweetner toward the bottom is the ticket. I guess I might be using the bottom bouncers next time.
Side note: we talked about the subject of walleye snagging at the inlet. He said he saw a bunch of DNR folks checking everyone a week ago and he thinks that has lowered the traffic. I saw about 8 cars in the inlet parking lot when leaving. Just nice to hear that DNR is out checking.
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The one wiper we picked up was off a light-yellow colored chartreus marabou jig with a small blade in front of it, just being trolled.
We talked with another nice young gentleman and his young boy at the south marina when pulling out. He was in a new Tracker (decked out). He fished in the morning and returned for the evening hours. He caught 1 walleye and 2 wiper all day. He picked them up along the East shore and out next to the island. He was very kind and open with information. He was running worm harnesses with blades near the bottom 30’ behind down riggers. The weird thing is he says he always runs at mach 2.7 even at this time of year. He said he did really well catching wipers last week using the same techniques up between the hog farm and freeway bay.
So it looks like something with blades and some sweetner toward the bottom is the ticket. I guess I might be using the bottom bouncers next time.
Side note: we talked about the subject of walleye snagging at the inlet. He said he saw a bunch of DNR folks checking everyone a week ago and he thinks that has lowered the traffic. I saw about 8 cars in the inlet parking lot when leaving. Just nice to hear that DNR is out checking.
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