Before sunrise, we headed to a mile-wide “reef” 7 miles NW of the harbor. It is about 39 feet of water there while the surrounding depth is 47-ish. Last year I caught a limit from there all the way to the weather buoy, so thought we would try it again. The waves were 3 to 4 feet for most of the morning, actually crashing over the bow sometimes. Glad the bilge pump worked. With those waves I really didn’t want to go to the weather buoy. Fortunately we had great marks right there at that 7 mile plateau.
Only 6 lines on my boat. Two were bandits unassisted, two were spoons with divers, and two were crawler harnesses with snap weights.
My new LiFePO4 batteries were showing 100% capacity but they were putting out no voltage. So no Minn Kota today. That made it challenging in the strong chop. Speed was all over the place and we had a lot of inadvertent S turns. Tried to average about 2.5 mph s.o.g.
We got an 18 incher before sunrise so we were off to a good start, but then nothing. Kept going over those great marks using different colors and different depths and different directions, but the fish just weren’t interested. By the third or fourth pass, they finally got hungry. We had also switched over to Flicker Shads, Flicker Minnows, and smaller reef runners by then so maybe that was the ticket. We landed 4 on that pass and lost another at the net. Also had two small drum when we got too far east of the plateau. The walleyes were particularly beautiful today. Golden, radiant.
But then the bite shut down again and we were out of time.
Back at Hot Waters, one guy said he too got 5 walleyes in 40′ of water, and also with small cranks. Another guy said he was in 40′ and wasn’t doing any good so he moved to 50+ feet and got his 18 in an hour – with spoons and worms.
