Hi All –

Thought some of you might appreciate a fishing report. Sorry in advance for the long post. Our group of 4 was on Lake 3 from Friday morning until Sunday night at about 8 PM ( made it out with the help of a GPS at 10 PM before the big storms came in).

Overall, I would say the fishing was good, it seems the walleye are dispersing and transitioning a little bit out of the shallows toward a little deeper water, so finding them was the toughest part. Overcast conditions really helped for afternoon walleye though. We mostly fished the southern islands of Lake 3. With the wind being a pain at times it was easiest to cover ground and drift using Lindy no-snag weights and spinning rigs (was getting most of my fish on a chartreuse blade, VMC single hook leech harness). Drifting with spinners allowed us to cover some water and the wind speed worked well to give the blade some action. Once we found them we used a home-made anchor to stay in place and jig. 6 – 12 feet of water is where we were finding them. Leeches were the ticket, not minnows. Wind-blown points and the slack water side of structure is where they were pooling up.

Night / evening bite was hands down the best time to be on the water. In that one hour window or so on Friday we pulled about 15 walleye jigging after we found them. Literally all of the fish we caught were nice eaters ( 15 – 17 inches), so we ate like kings the whole trip. Missed a 27-28 incher on the side of the canoe Friday night but that is a different story ;) The other canoe in our party stayed out of the wind around the islands and were finding them at the same depths with standard lindy rigs but with a little less action.

I wasn’t able to find any smallmouth yet, even though the terrain looked perfect. Once it warms up a bit they should be out and about. I tried casting crank baits, stick baits, spinners, swimbaits and even slow presentation wacky worms without any luck. Pike were slower than expected as well in the afternoons. I caught a couple on swimbaits and a few bonus fish on the spinner rigs but nothing of much size.

The fire damage was pretty severe, was interesting to see how it could miss whole shorelines bet yet still demolish islands. Sorry again for the long post! Good luck!