Well hopefully we'll get a few more reports for the month of July now that the board is getting a little more traffic. People don't have to be shy around here. All contributions are welcome.
The month of July is starting off with a nice day after 4 days of wind, clouds, cooler temps and some rain off and on to close out June. The water is a bit brown from the heavy winds, but has cleared some the last two days. The may fly hatch has started and is quite late again this year. Last year was the same and it seemed that the fishing was less affected than in past years. My guess is that with the walleyes being on the rocks, there won't be as many may flies to gobble up because they can't accumulate in the open water areas like they can on the shorelines and bays. The hatch is not very heavy yet so we'll see how it plays out in the next week or so.
The fish will be scattered about a bit from the winds, but our guests picked up a few June 30 when the weather started to break just a little.
Mid-lake humps were the ticket at the end of the month and we'll expect the majority of the action to come from that type of structure for walleyes this month.
Muskies should still be relating to weeds early this month, but will gradually move out to points close to weeds and mid lake rocks as the water temps rise. Complexes with multiple structural elements (ex. a point with some boulders and weeds) will certainly be excellent spots to concentrate on. Weed growth should be good all summer with the late start that the weeds got this spring. That might mean an opportunity for those that prefer fishing weeds to contact fish there in better numbers than might otherwise be possible be during a typical season.
Bigger Northerns should be headed to deeper points, but will still be in some shallow weed bays, pockets and shorelines as well. You can probably expect to pick up a few big northerns both jigging for walleyes and casting for muskies if things work out as they usually seem to during a summer.
Bass should be on rocky boulder shorelines so keep throwing those shad raps and crayfish cranks in there shallow.
Crappies are a bit of a mystery at times in the summer months, but if our friend Nic gets back up here, he'll be the best person to give us an idea of what kind of structure to look for them. On top of being an absolutely excellent all around fisherman, he can sniff out those crappies like nobody else. I call him the "Crappie Whisperer."