Hi Folks. We just completed the first weekend of the new season and what a Spectacular opener that we had “weather-wise”. This first weekend greeted us with mid-70 degree temperatures and mild winds which made for one of the most comfortable opening weekends in recent memory.
Spawning has ended on virtually every lake I’ve seen with the exception of a couple of the big lakes where it is winding down. Water temps on the lakes I’ve been on have ranged from 48 to 60. Over the weekend we found fishing to be nothing real special. We had plenty of action and it was multi-species fishing – we caught everything from walleyes to bass, and even some muskies and crappies, and even a couple of lake trout. Our experience was a lot of real mealy-mouthed fish. We had a hard time getting the hooks into these and missed quite a few. We tried everything -- we gave them time; we took them fast and it didn’t matter. Hooking them was just the luck of the draw. The other thing I noticed is that we seem to be caught in that void between spawn and post-spawn. After spawning these fish go and rest for a bit and then begin to move into the shallows to put on the old feed-bag. What we saw were fish just getting warmed up to do this, and things should really heat up over this next week.
With the nice temperatures, weeds should begin to grow and turn green, and this will be the next phase of the bite. We were having our luck using jigs and minnows and concentrating on fairly shallow water. Most fish were found in flooded grass, some timber and pencil reeds. Even in the deep, clear lakes we found our fish on a bright sunny day up pretty shallow – we caught them anywhere from 12 to 16 feet. I’m looking forward to any exciting week of fishing as the bite should continue to get better and better.
Well that’s all for now ----
Jeff