Last call PIGS! (pics)

[Spenser]

Wow what a weekend and what a season it was this year on Rainy! Conditions were almost perfect all year and to top it off the season started early which made for a nice change after a long winter on the ice! The overall numbers that we put in my boat this year were amazing to me! From the many trips I made this year we easily put over 300 walleyes in the boat and easily had 100 fish over the 22-inch mark. The biggest fish this year was 30” we had 2 over 29 and 9 at 28. Mother nature was on our sided this year and it might be a few years until we see the river conditions that we did through out this years run.

Now to this weekend report. We put 45 fish over 22 inches in the boat and threw back a TON of solid eater. My dad and I got to the river about 10 am Friday morning and the first thing I noticed was the river was down about 2 feet from when I was there a week ago. The water temp was 45 degrees and I knew right away it was going to be game on! My buddy had been up the previous days and said don’t fish anything but green and pink. Well come to find out he was right on the ball! I used the SAME presentation all weekend and didn’t change ONCE! I was using a ½ ounce Lindy jig with a green 2” Watsit grub. The Watsit grub is an awesome plastic for walleyes. It offers a big body presentation, which is key in the dark water, but it’s not too big of a presentation at the same time. A lot of guys run the traditional ringworms or other types of bigger plastic bodies but what we were finding with those was the fish were fish biting the end of the plastics and not eating were the hook was. With the Watsit grub the tail is the perfect length and the fish have no choice but to hammer down on the hooks, which in the end will, put more fish in the boat.

We targeted areas in the 10-12 foot range and kept our presentations as vertical as possible. One thing I saw a lot of this year was guy’s not controlling the drift like they should be. These fish have seen hundreds of jigs as they move up river. And 90% of those jigs go zooming by them at speeds that they don’t have time to react to. So with that said I was keeping the boat moving about .3-.5 and really trying to slow the bait down so they had more time to key in.

Finally the last thing that made a huge difference for us this year and this weekend was the idea of not jigging aggressive at all. A lot of guys think that snap jigging or doing a more traditional way of jigging is the only way to go. All we were doing all year was trying to keep the bait as still as possible and keep it off bottom 2-3 inches always in perfect striking zone. This out fished a traditional way of “jigging” 3:1 from we found all season.

All in all an awesome season on the River all because Mother Nature was on our side! Cant Wait for next year!

Here are just a few pics of the MANY pigs boated this weekend! All of these fish are over 27 inches.

29.5"

29"

28"

28"

28"

27"

27"

27"

27"

27"

Watsit Grub was MONEY...

[RiverFish]

Great pictures! Thanks for sharing.

[lispeej]

Those gotta be the same fish over and over! Just kidding.

Nice catch and thanks for sharing!!!

[maxpower117]

Nice fish!

Funny thing for me is that many of my tactics for this past weekend were vastly different with the same results. The fish were on a tear and would bite nearly everything you put in front of them.

My magic depth was 4-12'

Presentation didn't matter unless you weren't maintaining good contact with the bottom. Pulling up river, down river, across, snap jigging, slow and steady retrieve, fan casting, near the boat, end of the cast, didn't matter, they just slammed it.

The only color they would bite on was "in the water"! Didn't matter!

3/8 oz jigs because thats all I tried.

Any plastic we tried worked as good as any other.

[gloomiseye]

Awesome!

[S.D. Ice Angular]

Nice!!!