I know everybody opens a thread to get the fishing report, but let me start my report with a comment about why we go back to Witch Bay for our trips. Its all about the people and the service. With the boats we bring to camp, we can and do cover a lot of water. So, we can fish out of a lot of different camps if we wanted to do so. We keep coming back to Witch Bay because of the great people and great service. For example, one evening one or our trolling motors was making a strange sound and we were trying to figure out what was going on. Within a minute, 4 staff members, including a pro and a guy who was off duty that evening, were there trying to help us figure out what was going on. That's just one of a dozen or more stories I could relate. You don't get that type of help, attention and service anywhere else.
The fishing reports by Russ and Wayne are spot on. My group fished almost exclussively for muskies. We probably spent a total of 2 or 3 hours fishing for other species. Weather conditions changed daily with no real stability or trend. One day it would be cloudy and and the wind would be 15 to 20, and the next day it would be mostly clear and windier. The next day would be overcast with rain showers. You get the idea. So, we really didn't get much stable weather or any building trend with the weather. Despite that, we still were able to find plent of fish. We averaged 16 follows per day per boat, and we boated 16 fish between 2 boats in 6 days of fish. The lengths were 32, 35, 37, 38, 38, 38, 38, 39.5, 41, 42, 44, 44, 44, 44.5, 46, and 49.5. We caught at least 1 muskie everyday, and had a couple days with 4 fish. We saw lots of fish in the mid to upper 40" range, and probably 8 or 10 we would estimate at 50", give or take an inch or so either way. The number of mid 40" fish we saw and caught was truly amazing, and a great indication of super fishing in coming years. LOTW is truly an amazing fishery. We also caught some real quality northerns, including fish of 43.5, 38, 37, 37, and a number of 34 to 35" fish.
Water temps for the week were in the mid 60s for the most part. We saw temps of 63 after storms moved through and the wind was blowing out of the NW, and we saw temps as high as 67 during one of the warm and sunny days. When I say warm days, it almost got up to 70. Most of the days, the air temp was between 63 and 67. As Russ mentioned, weed growth is different this year. It seems that most weeds end at about 8 or 9' instead of the 10 to 12' depth. Many of the big weed beds are much thinner than normal. However, we were able to find nice cabbage beds throughout Moore Bay and in areas in Andrews and south of the Narrows. Fish were definitely relating to the cabbage in Moore Bay. However, as Wayne said, there were lots of fish on the rocks as well. I would estimate that 3/4 or more of our fish came off rock structure. Early in the week, pencil reeds and boulders were the ticket. Later in the week the cabbage and boulders worked. But, throughout the week, just boulders were producing fish, and quality fish.
As far as lures go, Russ gave a pretty good summary. We caught more than 50% of our fish on bucktails, with a black and silver (or similar color combo) double cow girl accounting for most of those. We also caught fish on weighted suicks, shallow invaders, and jackpots. We had plenty of follows on top raiders, but no hits from muskies (we did caught quite a few northerns on them).
As mentioned above, we were able to consistently raise good numbers of fish each day. However, it seemed that the fish were keyed into rather short feeding windows, and there seemed to be only a few windows each day. Thursday, the rise of the full moon seemed to be a key trigger, with the 49.5" fish in our group and a 50" fish caught by another group coming within 15 minutes of each other at the time of moonrise. Moonrise was in the evening all week, and fish did seem to be active in the evenings, and particularly around the moon rise. Rain and storms also seemed to be a trigger one day with lots of activity right before and right after the storms moved through. Otherwise, you had to be in the water hitting good spots or you might miss one of those short windows. You could go through an area or some spots and not see a fish and then somebody else would go through a half hour later and see 2 or 3 and catch 1 of them. You just had to keep at it. When the fish were hot, they were hot. We caught a lot of our fish in the figure 8, and a number of them after they had hit and missed the lure during the retrieve.
I would say from what we saw, despite the cool water temps and the relatively poor weed growth, the fish were where we expected them to be at this time of year -- on the rocks. For the most part, they were active and willing to show themselves. I think if the water temps were in the low 70s, we would have seen longer feeding windows and maybe more windows during a given day. Doing figure 8s at the boat was very important for us. Musky Mark caught a 46" fish on the figure 8 that he never saw until it hit the 2nd time through the 8. All in all, the fish were cooperative and we had a great time.
For the walleye guys, we did spend a few hours throwing crankbaits on the rockpiles and managed to catch a few walleye in the 21 to 26" range, but it was kind of tough with the winds we had. We also picked up a few smallies and a few northerns on the rocks as well.
Thanks to Russ and Wayne for all the help during the week. Thanks to Gail for letting Wayne fish with us for a couple of days. Thanks to Jeff and Mike from Chicago for enduring our stories. Thanks to Gail, Steve and all the staff for another great trip to Camp. We can't wait to get back.