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We boated 18 walleyes today. Largest was 18.5 inches

Kept 11 very nice fish that were between 15-1/2" and 17-3/4".

CC crawlers on a 3' lindy with a small float next to the hook.

17' to 24' of water, mostly sand bottom with a few scattered rocks.

Cliff

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Besides Shamrock, where can we find Casey's Crawlers at?

Also we won't get up there until about 9:30pm. We have always wanted to try night bite for walleyes but always end up at Bayview instead, is fishing night bite worth the try? Any tips?

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You can get them at Fortune Bay marina Shamrock or direct from me if you

need too.. I don't try night fishing anymore but I would either troll cranks or spinners over reef tops and cover lots of reefs or bobber fish the reef tops.

Casey

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We won't be up to Vermilion until 9:30 - 10:00pm, is either open then? We were thinkink bobbers and leaches over reefs like you mentioned.

Thanks Casey!

You can get them at Fortune Bay marina Shamrock or direct from me if you

need too.. I don't try night fishing anymore but I would either troll cranks or spinners over reef tops and cover lots of reefs or bobber fish the reef tops.

Casey

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Hey guys. I've enjoyed reading all your posts as of late. I'm heading up this weekend on a houseboat and just looking for a few locations to start fishing. Dont know much about the lake, other than its big.....

From what I'm gathering, 17-24 FOW, reefs at night, sounds like crawlers are the way to go....? Anything tips will. Oh......its a bachelor party, so any tips on night life are appretiated too!!!!

Happy fishing!

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Night is not usually good.. You missed that part! Have a brew for me..and say hi to my dad Dave when you get out with him.

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If houseboat is your mode of transportation, I really suggest having a sober driver! Way too many shallow rocks.

Bayview and Vermilion Club are our usual watering holes. Weather permitting Bayview has an increadible deck and female bartenders are pretty easy on the eyes. Not sure what Bayviews policy is on houseboats tied up to their docks though. Casino is always a great time when winning... Lol

Hey guys. I've enjoyed reading all your posts as of late. I'm heading up this weekend on a houseboat and just looking for a few locations to start fishing. Dont know much about the lake, other than its big.....

From what I'm gathering, 17-24 FOW, reefs at night, sounds like crawlers are the way to go....? Anything tips will. Oh......its a bachelor party, so any tips on night life are appretiated too!!!!

Happy fishing!

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You are better off at Bayview than trying to catch Walleyes after dark. The night bite just isn't worth the trouble most of the time. The early morning to midday action has been very good for me the last 3 weeks. I'm pulling spinners on bottom bouncers tipped with a crawler and I'm not anywhere near a shallow reef.

"Ace"

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Thanks Ace. We went out for about an hour last night... At about 10pm and got one snag, broke my line and drank beer after that... Lightning in the distance scared us...

This morning fished around Big Bay, only one walleye and one perch. Lindy rigs with crawlers.

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we got 7 walleyes after dark on Monday night and last sunday night I had to move spots 7 or 8 times and we didn't find the walleyes until after dark and caught 6, would have been more but the mosquitos found us. But the morning or sun down bite has been best no doubt.

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F'n lighting... No fishing tonight. Be back out in morning.

Drinks at Bayview are pretty good tonight.. Lol

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A close family friend arrived yesterday and, this morning, we started things off quite well. Water temps have been running 76 degrees in the mornings and ~78 degrees by afternoon. Today, the skies were cloudy early with a west wind of ~5-10mph. Fishing these past few days, while great by normal standards, has shown signs of slowing up. While we are still finding fish, the "biters" are not nearly as numerous as even a week ago. The schools are definitely tuned into the perch minnows and I believe we will see a gradual decline in fishing quality as the month wears on eek. Today, the active fish that we found were congregated on a sharp drop from 17'-25' of water. They were in nasty rocks and snags were easy to get if you lost focus and didn't "bounce". Hooking the "biters" was easier today and the 4"-6" perch minnows let you know they were there with the telltale rat-a-tat-tat type of nibble. Floaters are helping the crawdad thievery but they remain a nuisance. We caught several walleyes ranging from 14"-24". We had a fabulous walleye dinner last night and, so, everything today was C&R. The last time our friend visited we had a banner day at Trout Lake. Reliving that trip this evening has placed an encore Trout trip at the top of our agenda.

Pictured below is our Friend with his best fish of today:

Untitled.jpg

Good Fishing,

MarkB smile

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Our guest has enjoyed fantastic fishing since my last post 4 days ago. The really noticeable change for us is that 2 weeks ago we could go out, catch 20 walleyes, and 12-15 of them would be 16"-18". Now, for us anyway, 20 walleyes might include 4-6 walleyes 16"-18" with the balance being 10-12 walleyes 12"-14" AND 2-4 slot fish. I actually like seeing numbers of 12"-14" fish because I know that these up and comers will be our 16"-18"ers in a very short time. I also enjoy, finally, catching some nice slot fish with regularity. The fish remain tentative on the bite and we lose or miss many more than we catch. C&R fishing dictates setting the hook fairly quickly after a hit to prevent hook swallowing and that produces numerous "misses" cry It seems that attractants(garlic fish attractant), when applied to the crawler, is effective at certain times. confused Perhaps not, but our guest caught 6 fish to my NONE in a 30 minute period this morning using the attractant. shocked We've increased our trolling speed by 50% and this has helped with the crawfish problem. Today, fishing was good, but the fish were definitely scattered after the boomers from last night. I haven't cleaned any fish lately, but from the looks of them, they're doing quite nicely on perch minnows. Water temps this morning were 74 degrees and the wind was a quite stiff out of the west.

Good Fishing,

MarkB smile

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I agree... I found a found a lot of nicer fish in about 13-16 feet of water .. Much stronger average size. Puttting the afterburners on and brushing one mile per hour has also been triggering strikes. I have been using air in 100% of my worms. Good report!

Casey

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Still trolling at .4 mph to .7 mph but have added an orange, chartreuse, or pink float just ahead of the hook as an added attractant and to mostly eliminate the crawdads!

Getting a mixed size on the walleyes also now. Still getting mostly 15" to 18" sized fish as keepers too!

Cliff

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Thank you for these reports! I'd hoped to spend the soft water season on the lake but one thing or another keeps me going south once in a while. Look for me on the water again Thursday and with these reports I'm hoping for more good fishing (and cooler weather will be nice, too)!

RLG

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Well I have been up since Saturday and in the little fishing we had done, we had struggled. We were on fish but couldn't get them to go on lindys. So this morning we busted out the blades and had a great morning. We had a nice mess of 16-17" fish. We found them on the windblown side of a reef. They were lined up in 16-18' on the rock/gravel transition. I tried keeping us in that .9-1.2 mph range. Hammered silver and gold produced equally. I haven't musky fished much. The first couple days u never saw a fish. Yesterday afternoon/evening I encountered 3 fish and all 3 bit. The first about a 48" that immediately went airborne and then waved goodbye as the hooks popped free. The other 2 smaller fish swung and missed near the boat.

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You guys rock! I'm not coming up for a couple of weeks but love to see you taking the time to post. Was up last week and have never marked so many fish. Problem was finding a consistent presentation. Seemed like no matter what, it was one here, one there. Good to see some posts on smaller fish. Keep your lines tight and the posts coming. Gives us "working" folks some hope...

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Heading up to Vermilion 2 weeks from today with my boys and son-in-law. Son-in-law has never been fishing for walleyes before. I do not want to disappoint him after showing him pics of the 26 incher I caught last 4th of July. Lots of ravs and reports about Caseys Crawlers but curious if anyone is using leeches or minnows. Thanks for your input!

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I'm going up to my family's cabin on Lake Vermilion this weekend, and I'll post how it all went when I come back. I really want to get my dad on some walleye!

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I was using leeches and crawlers (not Casey's) a few weeks back and caught 3 to 1 on leeches in 24'. This weekend I will be getting some of Casey's Crawlers to try out though. Casey are you still giving them a shot of air and are you using the whole thing or just half for best results?

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Just cleaned 10 for a family fish fry tonight. Spinners again. Today silver was best and the bite was a bit deeper, 18-24'. 23" was the big fish, but overall the size was less today. Half a crawler was best. Perch are awfully pesky right now.

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Sweet, what time is dinner? Tastefully Simple seasoning on those eyes baked on the grill, the best. My mouth is watering and I just ate lunch..... grin

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You got that right klinger. Although it sounds like this batch is going to get deep fried. I forgot to add in the very little time we have musky fished the past 3 nights we have had action all 3 nights. I mentioned earlier the nice one I lost when it went airborne. I've also had 2 fish blow up and miss topwaters. And Wednesday night my brother in law got a 48"

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That's excellent news JW !! Gives a guy reason to keep coming back... I can't wait to get back up there and on the Big V water again.... only 7 days and back for another quick wknd of action ! Hopefully both the skis and eyes will still be cooperating !! Enjoy the fresh wallsters.

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I have been using air and about 6-7 inch crawlers.. Cliff is using floats without air in worm I believe with similar

Results

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4 days since the last post and we've been having a total ball! grin My wife, our guest, and myself have been fishing ~5 hours/day and averaging 20-25 walleyes/outing. Average size is still down a bit(14"-15") from early last month(16"+), however, 16"+ walleyes are still biting and if you spend the time and want to eat some fish, limits are easily attainable. Slot fish are much more prevalent for us. We had a perfect wind early this morning and it layed down to basically flat water from ~ 11 o'clock on. Water temps are running ~78 degrees. Today started off with the sighting of a really big musky laying in the shallows next to my dock. We got a really good look at her before she eased out of sight under the dock eek. My wife stayed home today so my Buddy and I decided to stay out awhile longer(3 o'clock). We fished 4 different reefs and caught fish on every one of them. Early in the day, we found them in 16'-18' and, as the day wore on, we got the most action in 27'-30'. Actually, we found fish at all depths all day but, shallow early and deeper afternoon is a fair statement. The fishing was spectacular! wink Early in the day we averaged 10+ walleyes/hour and late morning/afternoon ~5 fish/hour. Obviously. for us, morning fishing was(and has been)best. It was a BIG day in total count and we caught walleyes up to 21". Personally, I caught 5 different species on the same reef! shocked Walleye, smallmouth, jumbo perch, rock bass, and crappie! Big smallmouth have been an added bonus this past week or so. My Buddy used garlic attractant and a slow death hook and he boated twice as many walleyes as I did cry. The lesson learned: I am fishing a bit faster and the added movement with the slow death hook helped, which means I will be adding a small propeller spinner to my rig. Unfortunately, the past few days have turned up too many floaters. Yesterday, we found one that was really big! The fish was bloated but it must have weighed close to 8 maybe 9#'s alive! We release almost all of our fish and when we have a gut hook, I cut the line as close to the hook as I can reach. I think it works(most of the time) and here is an example. Yesterday, I broke my leader on a hook set. Today, my Buddy caught the same fish! shocked My hook was aways back and 2 foot of leader was hanging out of it's mouth but it still nailed that 1/2 crawler! Fish dinner tonight! The fish I cleaned were full of crawfish.

Good Fishing,

MarkB smile

This is my Friend's best of the day.

full-32496-22921-001.jpg

These are always a treat.

full-32496-22922-003.jpg

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Our Friend left this morning after an amazing 10 days of fishing. He brought with him some local tactics from his home area and some of them worked quite well.....at times. The day before yesterday, we had a great day fishing and he out caught me by a margin slightly > than 2:1. In my post of that day, I attributed his success to garlic attractant and slow death hooks. I would like to update that report at this time smirk Yesterday was his last day and we went fishing in spite of gale force winds. To put yesterday in perspective, I used up what I thought was a full charge in ~4 hours! I had my i-pilot set between 5 and 6 and headed the boat directly into the waves just so we could back drift at .7-1.0 mph! However, the fishing was phenomenal!!!!!!........for me grin Yesterday, my old go-to rig outfished the foreigner wink almost 4:1(15 boated for me to 4 boated for him)! I had him scrambling for floats, hooks, beads, checking leader length, everything but sitting in my lap and, I must say, it was an absolute hoot! The walleyes were in 27' off the end of steep dropoff that we had previously fished and I got hit almost immediately every time I dropped my bait whistle These walleyes were reminiscent of the schools we fished in June/early July with almost all of them 16"-18". I have no explanation how one person in a boat can seem to get all the action at times but it happens and quite often. Yesterday, the only thing in that boat experiencing "slow death" was his chances of winning our ongoing daily bet. laugh

All of the walleyes were released and the day capped the close of a great fishing experience between 3 old Friends.

Good Fishing,

MarkB smile

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Hey Mark we were cruising in the pontoon the other day over to birch point for ice cream and I think I spotted your boat over there along birch point on the lift?

The end of our week got to be pretty hit or miss. We had been finding them on 2 different reefs but they got pretty sparce on them. I'll have to start looking around at some of the other reefs in the future.

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  • The title was changed to 2020-21 Lake Vermilion Fishing Reports
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