July 18-23 Report

Dick's July 23 report pretty well sums things up, but I thought I would try to add a little. The weather last week was very nice, with temps in the mid to upper 70s most days, and partly cloudy skies. It rained Thursday afternoon/early evening hard and after the rain, the wind blew pretty good out of the NNW that evening and the next morning. Otherwise, the winds were managable. Water temps in Witch Bay and Andrews Bay were in the 72 to 75 degree range, depending upon wind, and the main lake water temps were in the 69 to 71 range. Water temps in Moore Bay were consistently 75 degrees. There was a pretty good algae bloom going on, but it didn't seem to affect the fishing to any degree. Even in the bloom areas, the visibility was still 3 to 5 feet, which made seeing muskie follows challenging, but didn't seem to slow the fish down. The wind would clear out areas of bloom, so even if you wanted to, you could always find clear water. The water levels were about 2' higher than when I was in camp last August, and some of the rocks that are usually visible were just under the surface. That combined with the algae made finding some of the spots a little tricky. The weeds were the biggest difference from the last few years. Usually it seems to me the deep weed edge is about 10', and areas like the Hay Fields, Trapper Shack and Riches have thick weed beds by mid July which are almost unfishable. This year, the deep weeds were very sparse, and most of the areas which are weed choked were very fishable. We fished for walleye about 2/3s of the time. You could find walleye on most of the humps, reefs or points in Andrews Bay or the main lake area, and we caught most of our fish in the 28 to 32 foot range, with some coming as shallow as 20' and some much deeper. As Dick stated, you had to work a little to find the spots that were holding the bigger fish, as a lot of them were producing only the small walleye. Most of our fish were caught vertical jigging with jigs tipped with crawlers. Our biggest walleye jigging was 30", but we also caught a 25" fish, and a number right around the 20" mark. Catching the 13" to 17" fish for shorelunch wasn't a problem. We did cast crankbaits on the rock piles a few times, and managed to catch some walleye in the low 20" range, plus quite a few smallmouth and even a 31" northern. We also caught some bonus smallmouth, including a nice 17" fish vertical jigging for walleye in the 20 to 22' zone in Andrews. We didn't spend much time fishing for smallmouths, but I understand there were some in camp catching very nice fish very shallow using slip bobbers and jigs in the boulders, and we saw Dick casting the shallow boulders with crankbaits as well. We spent some time in the shallow weeds fishing for northerns, and managed to catch a few. Our biggest northern of the trip was 35", and we had a few others in the low 30s, and the usual little guys. We didn't spend as much time as I usually do muskie fishing, but we still managed to find and catch some fish, including a couple of 40" fish and a 50.5" fish. For the most part, the bigger fish we found were rock oriented, and the smaller fish seemed to be weed oriented. The 50.5" fish came off a weed/rock combo spot. 3 out of the 4 fish we caught (including the 50.5" fish) were caught in the figure 8, so don't forget your boat side stuff. My general assessment was the muskie were about where you would expect them to be (both location and attitude wise) in mid to late July. Gail, Steve and the entire staff at camp were great, as always. They did everything they could to make our trip enjoyable, and it was. We had a great time, and can't wait to get back.