Fishing Report - June 23/11

Sorry for the lack of replies lately. I've been on the water pretty much every day and bouncing around a lot between Lake of the Woods, to the Winnipeg River, to the Red River. I'll try to summarize what the last couple weeks have been like on each body of water.

Red River has been a tricky bite. The current is still moving fast and the water is very muddy, even for the Red, haha. We were getting a few fish a day but you had to be moving around quite a bit as you'd only pick up a fish or two here and there. Cut sucker seemed to be the best but the goldeye have moved in the river and we were catching them as fast as we could unhook them. We did catch cats on the goldeye but sucker seemed to be the best. Shrimp didn't even get a sniff.

Winnipeg River has recently slowed down a bit as well. I think the mixed weather has the fish a little scattered. Again, you had to work for your fish, but we were still boating a few sturgeon each day. The water temp is up to about 58 and the bass and walleye have also moved in to the sturgeon areas. Seems the sturgeon have pushed to the deeper water, which is a little trickier to fish properly. I have a feeling that once things stabilize with the weather, the fish will move shallow again. Seemed with the windows opened, things got crazy. We had a double-header of mid-40's with Eric Meder and Arnel Inocando and a double-header 51"/48" with Dave and Braeden Kramble. Seems persistence pays off!

Lake of the Woods. I haven't fished the lake as much as I usually do for this time of year. We did spend some time doing bass and walleye on the weekend of the musky opener and although we found the walleye bunched up on the reefs, for the most part they were small eating sized fish. The bass were still shallow and concentrated as well. Topwater and jerkbaits caught our fish. I even managed a bonus 30lb musky on a Mepps #5! Actually saw quite a few muskies in the shallows following the smaller bass/pike baits. The water temp was 63 in the main lake and up to 69 in the back bays.

I leave tomorrow for another 3 days of sturgeon fishing so when I get back I'll try to get some pictures resized and posted up on here before I head up to Knee and Utik Lake next week.

Anybody else have any reports they would like to add?

Andrew