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Rainy Lake Fishing Reports by Capt John


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Just got back from a few days on Rainy. Fishing was quite good for us. We found a mixed bag in the shallow bays. Trolling shallow plugs we caught  a lot of walleyes and northern (some large ones), sauger,  perch and smallmouth. Bugs began showing up on the sonar screen Saturday. Water temp was upper 60's and just touched 70 late Saturday. Pike and sauger seemed to be getting ready to leave the bays and the walleye seemed to moving into them. Checked Kettle Falls off of my dad's bucket list! All and all it was another great trip to God's Country!

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Went for a couple hours today in North Arm. Was supposed to be low winds and no rain.  Wind was over 20 MPH and storm headed my way so I bailed. Main lake temps only 56F. I had no bites but only fished a short time.

 

At least the dragonflies hatched out and are eating up the bugs. Fishing has been poor for me my last several trips.

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CaptJohn, we were out there the same day, I think Tuesday it was? Saw your rig parked at the ramp. We were watching that storm coming from the north and pulled the pin at the last minute and got the boat out and back to the cabin just in time. Fishing was tough for us too, and has been all year so far. Lately any time we find a concentration of fish they are deep and small fish. Oh well one of these days the water has to warm up and get them going. Going to go give it another shot right now. Perfect day. 

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Good luck Fins.  Coming next week Tuesday-Friday.  Hoping to see some better news here in the coming days!

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Grindstone, today didn’t go much better, more of the same.....small walleyes in deep water. Tried pulling cranks in some shallow water, about the only thing we had going from the start and those fish weren’t there or wouldn’t bite, even the hammer handle northerns we had to weed through all year to get the walleyes weren’t biting. every spot we stop at that looks good almost always has a good amount of fish on it but most of the time they won’t bite and if they do they are small. I’m sure some people are getting fish out there somewhere but I can’t seem to figure it out and everyone I talk to at the landing seems to be going through what I am. I did talk to one guy at the landing today that said he heard the fish were going pretty good on the river near town so we are going to go check that out tomorrow. If that doesn’t work we will just start pulling the boat to lake of the woods until things heat up on rainy. On a positive note, off the dock is always good for a few nice smallies in the evening, those things crush a crank bait! Half the time right when it hits the water but they aren’t really my cup of tea. I’d be really curious to hear how other people are doing out there. Hopefully CaptJohn will chime in, think I saw your rig in the lot again today? 

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I was not going to go yesterday but the weather was too nice to stay home. Fished about 5 hours but only got 4 bass and one pike. Not one hit on my go-to jigs & plastic! I don't recall that ever happening over 5 hours. Got a few bass on surface lures (and the pike) and a few on cranks. Water was almost 6 degrees warmer than the day before. The nights finally stayed above the low 40s so that has to have helped.

 

I have been marking very few fish in water less than 30 feet. I rarely fish deeper than that.

 

Got desperate a few days ago and went down to Pelican. Not much better down there. A few crappie and dink pike and about 6 nice bass.

 

Headed north of Red Lake, Ontario in a week. Hope things are going better way up there.

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Went yesterday for about 8 hours. Main lake temps 65F. I fished shorelines mainly. Only got about ten fish. Half bass, half walleyes. Kept one eater, rest of walleyes over 20". Nothing huge. No luck on points, everything in shallow rocks. Not marking much except in very deep water. LOTS of boats way up in North Arm.

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Was on the US Side between Island View and the Brule for the last two days.  Tough sledding.  A few 15's for the cast iron, three over 22 and a lot of peanuts.  Nothing big, and not much luck marking pods of fish.  Probably spent as much time graphing as I did fishing.  Still shallow I think.  Casted shorelines and caught a few little smallmouth for fun.  

 

Back at it next week Tuesday and Wednesday.  I'm going to go bottom bouncing in some deeper water and try a few trolling patterns with rapalas... see what happens. 

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Thanks for the reports. Going to give it a try this evening. Got very frustrated and had to give it a break for a while. Hopefully things turned around a bit. 

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Caught walleyes last weekend in the river mouths of water coming into rainy. Had to work for them using jig and chubs and was able to bring home a nice feed. Like stated before, the water is still cold...58-60 degrees. I'm guessing the mayfly larvae giving fish plenty to eat back in the bays since the dragon flys are out in abundance.

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Anyone get out this weekend and care to share how fishing was? Will be heading Up tomorrow after work for a week at the lake. 

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14 hours ago, fins_n'_feathers said:

Anyone get out this weekend and care to share how fishing was? Will be heading Up tomorrow after work for a week at the lake. 

We just got back from a week on the east end of Rainy.  Fishing was consistent all week.  We found walleyes around offshore rockbars and humps (18' to 30') along with shoreline points.  Trolling spinner rigs, lindy rigs, slip bobbers and crankbaits all produced fish.  Leaches and shiners worked equally as well.  Bass and pike were slow but we did start finding them very shallow on topwater baits.

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Thanks for sharing. Sounds like things are starting to turn around. I’ve been checking some of my close to shore/close to shallow bay rock piles but haven’t seen any signs of life yet but I haven’t been out for a few days. By the sounds of it maybe I’m looking to shallow? Maybe the fish skipped over my normal transition time spots? I’ll have to poke around with some deeper off shore stuff in the morning.

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Fished for a few hours this afternoon after the rain went through and the wind died down a bit. Tried a good dozen places in between black bay and the Brule and only got around 10 fish for the effort. The water was still pretty much ice cold at a cool 65 degrees in the main lake. We checked a few off shore reefs and saw zero signs of life on the ones we checked. The places we did get a few fish was were there was a rock to mud transition near shore on points. All in all another tough outing for us and on a side note, on the way in we pulled cranks in shallow water and the May flys were thick on the surface on the wind blown side. 

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Fins - same for me yesterday.  Fished three hours in the evening last night.  Pretty big wind still at 7pm.  Caught 5 walleye (all dinks) and a northern.  I went out for two hours this morning, mainly graphing.  Stopped near Cranberry Island and caught one 15 inch for dinner.  Will go out again this evening for advanced scouting.  Big group coming up over the 4th of July and they are expecting to catch fish.  Maybe i'll have to reset expectations... 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Any info on the current walleye bite?  We are headed up next week for our annual camping trip to the East end but we are coming a month earlier than usual and curious on the bite.  Any info is appreciated, thanks! ?

Edited by dnovak
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You should do fine. The weekend before the 4th was when we really started to see lots of fish showing up on the rock piles. That being said they were not on all of them and we did have to use some patience and check a few before picking the right one to fish. Just use your electronics and fish where you see big pods of fish. Was up there for the 4th but didn’t get on the lake due to festivities and stuff but the cabin was coated with mayflies both mornings so that might throw a monkey wrench in things a little but nothing some finesse work and getting creative with some crawlers can’t fix. Good luck and let us know how your trip goes.

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Sounds like you guys had a pretty good hatch earlier this week that has affected the bite.  We'll give er hell and report back when we get out.  Thanks for the info!

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Not sure when your heading up but we will be up for a week starting tomorrow. I’ll try to put up a report tomorrow evening sometime when we get off the lake. 

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We are also boat camping on the east side of Rainy this week (Wed). Any reports would be appreciated.

My main question is: Have the walleyes transitioned from minnows to crawlers and leeches?

Happy camping!!

 

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We were on the lake July 2nd through the 8th.  Mayflies monkeywrench for sure.  More fishing than catching. 

 

We marked fish anywhere between 24-37 feet on submerged humps and breaklines.  30-35 seemed to be where we would actually get bites.  We worked hard to get enough for a big fish fry on our last day and caught 6 slot fish, with the largest being 24 inches. 

 

Marking fish was easy, getting them to bite was another story.  Leeches seemed to work best, but we used crawlers and even mixed in a minnow here and there to see if that would help.  It was frustrating to have a large group of first timers to Rainy struggle like this, but we had good weather, cold beer and camaraderie all week.  

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We just got off the lake. The bite sure has changed since we were out last week. Today there were still some fish on rocks and they were more than willing to bite but they were in such tight groups it made it very hard to fish them. making it even more complicated was the howling wind and the spot lock function on my terrova mysteriously quit working for some reason. Not to happy about that ?! If I had spot lock, a slip bobber rig would have been lights out! Every place we stopped at the fish were set up in the identical way, a really tight pod of fish on the very top of the reef and an absolute TON of fish in the mud on the sides that wouldn’t bite anything, I assume these are eating bugs. Literally a carpet of fish on the edges. Got more than enough fish to keep things interesting and enough for a great dinner for us tonight so I consider that a win. Everything on a Lindy rig and a half crawler. Going to put the downriggers on the boat tomorrow to get those fish in the mud. A person just can’t put a Lindy or spinner in front of enough of them fast enough to make it worth while. Pulling a little original rap at 2.5 mph puts a bait in front of lots of fish faster and there’s always a few hungry ones in the pack, you just come across them way faster pulling cranks. Good luck out there everyone! 

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I went Monday mid-day for a couple hours to make sure all my new electronics were working. I have never marked so many groups of bugs. At first I thought they were minnows - no such luck. Had to be mayflies as there just ain't that many baitfish in Rainy. Kinda hard to pick out the fish images among the swarms of other critters. I am betting the hatch Monday night was epic.

 

I got three nice pike but nothing else. Water temp 74.

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Went yesterday for 8 hours. Only got six fish. Two walleyes 24' & 27" plus four decent pike. All on soft plastic. 20 FOW. Still marking swarms of ( I guess) mayflies at all depths. Hard to tell what you are looking at but I did find a few schools of fish that didn't bite. Water temp 71F.

 

Picked up a bunch of spiny water fleas on one trolling pass so might be marking those.

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I will be up 7/20, looking forward to being on my favorite lake. I dropped my new boat off today to get fitted for a convertible top/canvas. Last year it blew and rained so much I figured we needed to finally do it.

 

I sure appreciate all you guys posting up. Miss your video's John! 

 

Regards,

Bill

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Coming back, 7/19-7/21 to shake off that 4th of July slump.  Looks like she'll be a hot one!  The Bimini top helps with the heat as well.  

 

Hopefully the bugs are slowing down by then. 

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Been fishing quite a bit the last week when the weather allows. Earlier in the week the flies were still pretty bad but it seems like they are wrapping up now. There has been good days and days we really had to work for them this week. The common theme seems to be find a reef that’s loaded one day and they are gone the next day, or even hour to hour. Several times we checked spots on the way out that had zero fish on them and decided for the heck of it, check them on the way back and there’s fish all over them. It’s been an odd year for us. We are pretty much using strictly crawlers and spinners to move along quick and pick off the biters in the pods of fish and it seems like this year those pods of fish have been in really really tight groups, we’ve learned to never rule out a spot until it’s been very thoroughly checked because it’s easy to miss a group of fish when they are all piled in a 20 foot circle.yesterday was one of the tougher days where we really had to work for fish but the flat calm and blazing sun was probably to blame for that. This morning we went out and found a spot that had a ton of fish in a little group on the shallowest spot of the reef. We did our spinner routine but it was a pain because it was hard to turn around fast enough to get back over them so we anchored up on the side of them and threw jigs with a half crawler at them and absolutely crushed them! One of those bites that’s so good all you can do is laugh, for the last 45 minutes or so we started trying all the odd ball plastics I’ve accumulated over the years and they hit those even harder than the crawlers. It was a blast but like I said before, I’m sure they will be gone tomorrow. Good luck out there everyone and let’s hear some more reports! Have to go home tomorrow but will be back up first thing Wednesday.

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  • 'we have more fun' FishingMN Creators

@fins_n'_feathers I love it when they group tight like that and you can toss a jig at em. Don't be afraid to use plastics on that jig.

 

Nothing like feeling a walleye smack a tossed jig.

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Sorry for the late report, but better late than ever.  We fished the East side of the lake 7/8-7/12 and got pretty beat up from the wind, rain, and of course the skeeters.  Hats off to the wife and daughters battling the elements!! We did find fish on main lake reefs and actually quite a few active ones too.  Most were on the tops of shallower reefs actually in that 12-16' range and they seemed hungry.  We would just scan reefs until we found ones w/ fish on them and fish the highest concentration of fish.  Pluck a few out of that school and try to find the next hungry school.  We rigged w/ leeches and crawlers and they seemed to each shine at different times.  If we found a decent pod of fish in those rollers we just spot locked and pitched slip bobbers over the side of the boat.  Tons of fun for the kids!  We kept plenty of fish to eat even though the smaller ones were pretty hard to find.  Most fish were right at that 20" mark or so.  We never made it out super early and never stayed out real late but i am guessing it could've been great. This is our family trip and its quite a bit more relaxed than w/ the boys  (even though they put in about 6 hours in a steady rain the one day)  Another great trip and we'll do 'er again next year!  ?

Edited by dnovak
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Thanks for the report. Rainy is always fun, been going up for probably 30 years. Last year we had the wind and rain. My wife said she would not go up again in my 1987 Smokercraft Big Fisherman Deluxe anymore so I bought a bigger/ nicer boat. My boat was in great shape so I sold it to a friend. It was tough to part with it because I bought it new and customized it to me.

 

Looking forward to now having a double counsel and convertible top canvas with side curtains for the rough days. 

 

I am heading up Saturday. I bought my MN and Ontario license online and although we typically just fished the MN side, this year I may venture into CA. With the bag limits what they are in CA, I probably won't keep any fish. Still will be nice to explore a bit, maybe get away from the crowd. 

 

Thanks,

Bill

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