Hello from the NW Angle!

Water temperatures are starting in the low 70’s in the morning, reaching mid to upper 70’s in the evening.

Minnesota walleye action can be hot running deep diving crank-baits straight, down rigging or lead core. Soft bottom areas can also be worked with spinners and a night crawler.  Fish have been favoring gold on bright days and orange, chartreus or pink in low light.  Many larger northern pike this last week in the boat via crank-baits just outside of rock reefs and points.

Canadian walleye fishing has been more productive away from reefs and points in soft bottomed areas. The best method is to pull a spinner to find concentrations along the bottom and switch to jigging to fill out limits.

Musky attitude in Canada varies day to day. Plenty of fish are still being caught in shallow weeds including a couple of 50+ giants this past week.  Fish are also being caught in more traditional mid-summer spots such as rock reefs and points.  The most productive baits this week were crane baits or other flat baits, buck tails and top waters. 

Until next week,
Sunset Lodge
 

I have a 2007 Northwood pontoon, commander 2223.  Does any one know who the OEM was for the covers that came with this boat?  Looking for a replacement cover that will fit the original snaps.

Got on a pretty decent bite this weekend.   Lots of quality eating size fish 14-18" mostly,  a few bigger ones.  Fish were in main basin steep drop-offs in 20-30 feet.  Crawlers and leeches were working.  Weather was beautiful all weekend.  Can't wait to come back up in August!   

We did okay in Frazer over the weekend. Some nice 15's and 16's and tons of the smaller walleyes. For some reason I usually catch the smaller ones clean, but I throat hooked a ton this weekend. Just couldn't feel their bites, so I'm guessing they had plenty of time to try to swallow the bait. 17-22 worked best for us with Lindy's and seemed leeches outperformed crawlers about 2-1

Water is pretty high on Vermilion for this time of the year. We were up over the weekend and got another 2 1/2 inches of rain!

After a long 13 days straight of work we got out and did a little fishing!  Felt AMAZING to get back out on the water.  We chased panfish Saturday evening and pretty much struck out and went Sunday with the old man and got into a big ol mess of panfish.  Buddy of mine opened up his jig company in Vergas, MN and it's called Panfish Pirates, check him out on facebook.  Hes got a soft plastic called the Kraken that I have never seen before and boy did the fish eat them up!  We didn't use any live bait during the 6 hour trip out fishing and we landed hundreds of gills and crappies.  We landed 6 gills that were 9.5" sadly we couldn't find any big crappies even though the girlfriend lost one at the boat that was over 13".  Fish were on the edges of the weeds either lilly pads or down in the cabbage.  This Kraken has 3 legs behind it and it has natural bouyance within the plastic and it allows the jig to be swam through the weeds slower which was key yesterday.  Dad was in the front of the boat and a few times he had to stop and put his rod down because his arm hurt from fighting the fish and a few times his finger tips were hurting from taking the fish off of his hook but regardless he had a blast fishing.  We used 6 mm jigs tipped with the Kraken pitching from 4-14 feet of water.  Few times we were vertical jigging and my big blue gill pictured below came vertical jigging in about 12 feet of water.  All the gills were returned safely and only 6-7 crappies were taken home for dad to have a fish fry.  Pike must have been starving because I had about 6 blue gills get attacked by pike at the boat as i was bringing them in!

We've been big fans of the 3" minnows, and 5" leeches, along with crawlers, great color combinations, with floating versions ta boot.👍👍     Found the pinched half crawlers to work great for adding spin to "slow death" presentation...

Okay, I’m not into gore. I’ve only had to do surgery on one hook and that’s enough. PSU, I’m wondering how you’re doing. Cliff offered good advice. In the Frazer Bay Area, bobbers are my only means of catching fish of size. I t seems like the dinks are dominating the reefs. Spinners can pick up fish near structure. I was looking back at my logs recently and late July has always been tough.  Dick

Ive been out a few times as well..have tried from the harbor all the way up to boyscout...have been getting a few everytime out but has been slow for me....been trolling crawlers with big colorado blades..have caught fish on flats by barkers,between the bridges,and out from clyde area....got 6 cats accidentally while trolling boards by the community hole south west side of spirit lake...water clarity still sucks in the harbor..a bit better the farther up river u go...has it been kinda slow for everyone?????ive been doing better on fish lake.lol

And they are big, feels like you have a bass on! We thru them all back.