Fishing report for 6-17-2013

Hi everyone,

Guided a father/son, Duane and Todd for a full day yesterday.We had a fair walleye chop to begin the morning and after catching a nice perch on the first cast, we thought we were in for a high powered day. But as luck would have it, we went the next 6 hours without a fish except for Duanes mudpuppy. Only the second one I've seen caught in the Big Chip in 53 years.

We had a beautifull mostly sunny sky with some thick clouds moving through and the wind died allowing the air temps to rise to the high 70's. If the fish would've been biting , it would be perfect. In the last three hours we finally caught a break. The wind swithched to the NE making a good walleye chop again and I swithched us to minnows. The action was consistent after that, In fact we ran out of minnows and we had 4 dozen to start. We wound up with a hefty stringer of crappies,walleyes and perch after releaseing more then we kept, but had a nice pile of fillets when all was said and done.

The leeches just didn't produce today and I was slow on the trigger in swithcing us to the minnows. It had been a leech bite the last few times but this fishing trip proved once again you have to keep experimenting. We caught all the fish over deeper wood. The middepth wood and the weed spots we fished produced nothing. The water temps were 71 degrees which is usually an indication of a leech bite. Again, always experiment. Remember, protect out waters and use lead-free jigs. Good luck fishing everyone.

Walleyemaxx