Hi all,
opening weekend {Walleye) has been and gone and despite being at work for the actual opening day it was a fun filled adventure that i will remember for a long time.
MY BOY HELPED ME PREP THE BOAT ON FRIDAY, HE WAS NOT PUT OFF BY THE RAIN AT ALL!
On Saturday i was working, but the kid i work with (kids in care....yup I’m still hanging onto my job by a thread) loves fishing so we spent the day (afternoon) looking for walleye on Wabigoon. Surprisingly there were very few other boats out there. Don’t know whether it’s the economy or what, but the lake was empty compared to last year.
Anyway, water temps are still pretty low despite the ice having been gone for well over a month. The water levels on Wabigoon are a little low, but not bad. There are no weeds yet, the odd tiny scrap of very new green stuff (coontail) comes up now and again.
We started off on the main body of the lake. There had been a strong SW wind the day before, and a moderate SW wind was blowing when we started, so a pretty good bet would be to hit a wind swept shoreline keeping in the 8'-12' FOW range, or even shallower, given the water temps and recent/current spawning activity.
So that’s what we did and the shoreline we hit was also not far from a creek (2 miles)...perfect spot i thought to intercept the walleye as they slowly start to migrate away for their spawn in the creek....lol....WRONG....NADA...ZIP....ZILCH.
I would have liked to explore this area a little bit more, but having the kid in the boat it was imperative to catch a fish soon to keep him interested, but to be fair to him he is a very patient fisherman....LOL....HE'D NEED TO BE WITH ME AS A GUIDE!!!!!LMAO
We moved on to a spot I had had a couple of OOS walleye whilst Bass fishing in the last month, and we got a couple of small ones within the first hour in 8'FOW on varying size jigs with minnows as bait, i did try leeches and night crawlers but no takers. After that the bite died, not that it was ever really on, so we went to look on the deeper spots....nothing there.....so i figured the walleye were still in shallow after the spawn. I did get what i think is a young musky on my second cast.......
YOUNG MUSKY? WHAT DO YOU THINK? LOOKS LIKE IT TO ME.
We headed into another spot and trolled the shore with various walleye spinners, jigs, wiggle wart crank baits and other assorted crank baits, beetle spins, using minnows, night crawlers leeches, Gulp baits of various colors and imitations, again nothing but pike, only one being of size, but unfortunately for the kid it snapped him off...but he enjoyed it while it lasted.
We found a small creek and i decided to cast right up close to shore with a jig and minnow at the opening to the mouth of the creek, WHAM! Thought it was a pike but turned out to be a nice 22" male sitting in 1 or 2'FOW. That was it for walleye on Saturday, but we had three nice ones on the stringer and i did a fish fry for his supper. Sorry bout the lack of pics/video for this part of the story...but work has confidentiality/anonymity rules to protect the children.
When i got home from work on Saturday, my boy was full of beans, he really loves to be outside, so we headed down to the lake for an hour before bedtime........
COME ON DAD....TAKE ME TO THE LAKE
WE PLAYED IN THE SAND AND THREW PEBBLES
AND WAITED FOR A FISH TO BITE
DID NOT TAKE LONG.......
So considering i was at work all day of the official opener, i can’t complain at all....got some walleye....job done, and fished my first opener with my son....priceless. Now i just had to try and sleep as it was Lac Seul in the morning!
SO I GOT UP ON SUNDAY MORNING AT STOOPID O'CLOCK AND HEADED OFF TO MEET AL.
THE LAKE LOOKED AWESOME WHEN WE ARRIVED AT THE LANDING
To our great surprise we were the only ones at the landing, we had expected at least one camper to be there. In fact we only saw 2 other boats all day, one boat had launched from another landing, and the other was a CO who stopped to check our licenses. He was also surprised when he asked if there were any other boats at the landing and we told him no.
Another surprising thing that morning was the water level. The water is at least 5' down, there are standing deadheads that do not show most years that were a full 5' of showing standing trunk. Now although I love Lac Seul, and just being there always makes me grin, i was concerned that finding fish could be difficult today, given the early ice out, low water temps and now ridiculously low water i was convinced the fish would be like me before I’ve had my morning coffee and smoke i.e. scattered, confused and difficult to predict.
I had been reading up on early season walleye fishing lots, and the general consensus seemed to be fish close to spawn areas in 2'to 14' FOW, if a prevailing SW wind has been going, try those exposed shorelines. I had tried this the day before on Wabigoon with no success, but given the huge differences between the Goon and Lac Seul i had to try.
Just before you get out into the main bay there is a narrow channel with some current running through adjacent to a creek like channel that runs for a couple of miles. It is a sandbar on one side and rocky the other and about 12' deep at the shallowest point through the channel. We did ok early in the season here last year, and its becoming a tradition to cast the first jig here anyway.
We spent a good hour here with just one Jackfish to show for our efforts, and then Al hooked into a beauty. About ten minutes later i hooked into something big also, but it spat the hook after a 90 second tussle.
AS SO OFTEN HAPPENS....AL PUTS THE FIRST FISH IN THE BOAT.
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Good start, but definitely slower than I’m used to on this body of water. Because we figured the fish were scattered we stuck at this spot for another hour, but not another bite. Not more than a mile from the spot we were on was a reef we found last summer. I decided to head down there as last year i had struggled to find it on the second visit, and this year i now own a GPS, so the plan was to mark it on the GPS and see if there were any fish already there.
Found the reef no hassle. It tops out at 8'FOW from 50'FOW on the bay side and 30'FOW on the shore facing side. Again....we both got a few pike, but no walleye....not even anything showing on sonar. I figured that the walleye had not reached this "summer" mark yet. We trolled around that bay too, in shallow bays, rocky shores etc...etc....NOTHING.
Al and i decided that it was gonna be a tough days fishing at that point...lol. i suggested that we try a couple more of my summer spots just to confirm that the fish were not there yet, then continue to search the shallower water with our first spot always there to fall back on as we had caught some fish there...even though it was a long time between bites.
We headed to a spot where the lake opens out. As we approached the summer honey hole....i noticed that the rocks that are normally 5' under the water were showing. I knew there were other rocks there, but as the memory was rusty i decided to approach slowly.
This proved to be the best decision of the day. I was watching the sonar for rocks as we approached. We were still a way off the 15' spot i wanted to get to in 45'FOW when i started to mark school after school of baitfish....BIG SCHOOLS...coming through midway up the water column.
When we hit 40'FOW perfect arches were hugging the bottom and suspended. Al asked why i stopped and i explained, he was skeptical...but he can’t see the sonar from the front of the boat....lol.
I dropped the line in...5/8 odd-ball jig and minnow (chart/white) and got a whitefish (suspended) right away...that was it...we stayed for an hour and started to fill the stringer (remember to kill your fish before putting them on your stringer on Lac Seul...no live fish in possession on Lac Seul except bait)Lots of whitefish too, good action........although the walleye were small, odd for Lac Seul as its usually difficult to catch a limit as the fish are usually in or above the slot size of 18" to 21".
FOUND SOME....DEEP TOO
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Despite the weather report, storms were brewing and the bite on this spot was dying off. The CO had also just stopped us for a check and said the other boat he just checked which was up along shore had not boated a single fish; he said they had been working shallow water too.
I was now all but convinced we were in a situation where the fish were done with all their springtime activity and were well on there way to being in their summer haunts. I suggested to all we try a deep water reef that tops out at 20'FOW with 50'FOW one side going down to over 80'FOW on the other. I wanted to see whether or not this would produce.
Once again we found some fish, it was my turn to get the big one this time....then we got some more nice keeper size ones....no whitefish at this spot though.......all fish coming at 30'FOW on the shore facing side of the reef. Jigs and minnows....my bigger minnows were out fishing Al's smaller minnows as a general rule.
The storms got pretty bad, and we spent 2 hours on shore seeking shelter before we got a break in the weather, the bite died on the spot we were just on so headed back to where we caught the white fish....the bite was on again, and despite some heavy downpours we stayed till around 7pm, great days fishing, great company, great learning experience!
NOT MANY OF THE USUAL LAC SEUL ‘HAWGS’, BUT DEFINITELY A BETTER OPENER THAN LAST YEAR
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