Edpaw_83

Hello everyone. My family and I went to Balsam lake recently and received lots of tips from the kind people on this forum on how to fish the lake, this led us to success fishing for walleye and pike, so I figured I should share what we did so others can benefit from it. We trolled 8'-10' weedlines with cranks (Berkeley flicker shad 7 firetiger) for the first two days and caught a good amount of fish, but as the water rose in temperature (63f->66f) we started to troll the 12'-15' weedlines again with cranks and had lots of success with the walleyes in doing so. Occasionally we would let the wind drift us over the weeds and I would either rip a bucktail around or soak a slip bobber with a 3 inch minnow, I caught 3 nice walleye and 2 pike using these methods and they all fought hard. We caught over 25 walleye (most between 16"-20") and 4 pike (24"-28") and a few accidental out of season smallies. All in all it was a fun fishing trip.

Thanks everyone for the responses I will give a report following the end of our trip!

Hello everyone, I'm going to a cottage on balsam lake from the 16th-20th, hoping to target some pike, walleye, and crappie. From what I've gathered I would guess that pike and walleye are post-spawn and in shallow water (4-10') sitting in the new emerging weeds, and crappie would be in bays, spawning possibly? Also, it might help to know we have a fish finder that has sidescan and can tell us the depth we're in. I would be grateful if anyone could point me in the right direction regarding how to target any of these 3 species on balsam lake. Thanks again.