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Whitefish Chain Fishing Reports


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been fishing the depths mentioned - 12-20ish.  Only one eye Sunday-Tuesday.  Haven’t seen hardly any caught. No shortage of 22-24” pike.  Been on upper, lower, rush and cross.  If anyone wants to share a nugget of info, it’d be much appreciated. 

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  • 'we have more fun' FishingMN Creators
21 hours ago, OutdoorLife4Life said:

Was out this past weekend for a little bit and caught a handful of walleyes and a bunch of pike. We fished 13-18feet mostly. All of our fishing was done on main lake structure. Our biggest was 25.5. We caught a couple 16”, a 17”, a couple 18”, and a 19” and change. Jig and minnow was still best for us. My wife pulled a spinner but caught mostly pike.  Biggest pike was 26”. Good luck to everyone!

985A2AAA-78E1-4079-9E6A-D47DD6B73C56.jpeg

B2CEAD28-C9F7-4444-B24C-82ABB8BAA39E.jpeg

FD160CD7-B874-46B6-8D05-1063F04F689E.jpeg

Nice catch. ???

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Sorry for the late reply. I  fished July 3 and 4 and caught a 14, 19, 21, and 27. Weather was too nice to fish, but still went out (clear skies and calm). Better for swimming and boating. Fish were caught in different locations in Middle and Upper and before 8 AM. Water still seemed cool. Few weeds up yet. Should be better now and forward with all the heat recently. 

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I fished on Cross for a couple hours on Sat morning (6-8am) and caught two 14" eye and a couple pike. One eye was on a jig/leech and the other on a silver Flickr Shad. 17ft. The sunfish were relentless on plucking leeches off my jig if I wasn't moving fast enough or got up into the weeds a bit. Nice morning to be out, but the lack of breeze and full sun it was hot by 8:30.

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My father in-law and I got out Saturday from  9-11:30am and 8-10:30pm trying a few new spots.  We found crazy amounts of perch and sunnies with a few pike mixed along the weed edges.  Once again the eyes eluded us but was nice to be on the water

Edited by ozzie
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Headed up Sunday for ten days.  See water is in high 70'S ,  pretty warm.   Did see a pic. on Heaths resort website of a nice catch of walleyes. Hopefully with the screwy  spring this may be the summer peak.  Daughter was up last weekend and she said bass were going crazy in the morning before it got hot.  May try some spinners first.   Any fish stories to tell?  

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I fished last Tuesday and Wednesday. Caught 5 walleyes in Lower WF on lindy and leach. 4 of the fish were caught within an hour on Tuesday early evening. Mornings were slow both days. Heading up again on Monday for a few days. Hopefully weather will stay stable. 

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heading up Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon and hope to find a couple hours to get out on the lake.  Word is the eyes are biting out there

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  • Hi. I was out Monday night and Tuesday morning. My son and I caught six nice eater walleyes. Weather was stable with a consistent north and nw wind. Fish were easy to spot on the Lowrance. All in 14 - 16 weed edges. All that changed Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. No wind or slight west wind. No fish to be found on Wednesday morning. How quickly conditions change and fish patterns are impacted.
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Unfortunately for the fishing report side of things I did not get out last weekend. This weekend should be different as we don't have scheduled plans...hope the bite continues out there!!  Good Luck

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Hello. I fished Sunda night right after the all day rain. Picked up two nice eaters between 7-8. Saw a bunch of fish, then everything changed. Couldn't find a fish on Monday into Tuesday. Spent a couple hours looking. I did hook up on a couple of huge small mouth. Good luck.

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Back from the cabin.  Fishing was ok .    Changed from day to day though.  Caught walleyes on weed edges,  drop offs and even a few trolling cranks over 80' of water.  Did notice the shoreline weeds are very thin.   Wild rice on chain is very poor,  will be bad for the duck hunters. Best fishing we had was for bass and crappies.  Wife caught a 24' smallie on a leech.  Now its off to Yellowstone and Glacier Parks.  Had to promise the boss I would not bring a fishing pole.   Leave a few for me guys and enjoy August.

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On 8/2/2019 at 2:48 PM, rayguy said:

Back from the cabin.  Fishing was ok .    Changed from day to day though.  Caught walleyes on weed edges,  drop offs and even a few trolling cranks over 80' of water.  Did notice the shoreline weeds are very thin.   Wild rice on chain is very poor,  will be bad for the duck hunters. Best fishing we had was for bass and crappies.  Wife caught a 24' smallie on a leech.  Now its off to Yellowstone and Glacier Parks.  Had to promise the boss I would not bring a fishing pole.   Leave a few for me guys and enjoy August.

 

I've been meaning to try some of this open water trolling over the deep basins.  Does it matter what time of day you go?  Do you just troll around looking for schools of bait fish or do you try to focus on the open water adjacent to points etc?

 

Also what depth are the weedlines stopping at?  I haven't been up since the 4th and didn't get a chance to fish then.  I'm wondering if the weedlines are getting deeper with the zebra muscles allowing deeper light penetration.  I'll be up in about a week and hopefully will be able to put a couple in the boat for a meal.

 

 

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Open water seems best late afternoon into evening.  Have a neighbor who goes out at dark and at times does well trolling deep cranks over deep water.  Don't really look for baitfish. If you have a decent depth finder  you will see fish arches in the various depths.  Use a crank that runs a little above the most arches. Far as weeds I don't notice any great difference since the zebras invaded .  Seems weed lines are around 15-18 feet .  Weeds are not real thick anyplace this year.  Good luck.

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6 hours ago, walleye vision said:

Do you just troll around looking for schools of bait fish or do you try to focus on the open water adjacent to points etc?

 

If you can spot fish on sonar, GREAT, catch em. Sometimes it's not easy to find the target fish. I look for 'food' like bugs, minnows or cisco. I was fishing through billions of small minnows yesterday in 100+ FOW. They were easily visible over the side of the boat. If there are groups of gulls or loons, I'd start there. These suspended predators aren't just 'swimming around' they are living WITH the food 24/7! Anytime can produce good results but if I had to pick I'd say mornings are best, and often times leads to mid day action. Calm sunny days would be my 2nd choice. I'd hit up the obvious structure at prime time (evenings). Good luck!!!

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I was out trolling over the deep unknown out there this weekend and Friday evening from 7-11pm with 3 eyes boated 16", 18.5", and a 19" along with a couple pike.  Fish caught over 110' of water at 8:30pm -9:45pm...rest of time was just washing the lure.  Saturday fished 7-10pm and caught a 19" eye at 8pm and a 14" at 9pm and nothing else.  Tried Sunday morning from 9-11 trolling and got skunked and then turned to look for some whitefish and it appears they left the 30-50' ranges and have all moved to 80' of water or more and are a little harder to catch.  Oh well!  Over all it was a picture perfect weather weekend on the chain!!!


FYI I had best luck 100' back on braid with a shadow rap (white) attached.

Edited by ozzie
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Ozzie, were you just trolling or down rigging at all?  Sounds like a down rigging situation but haven’t seen a comment as such.

 

Thanks for the report!

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no downriggers.  I used shallow rapalas and my fishing partner used deep divers.  we both ran in the 90-150ft of line out.  The fish are free range feeding on minnows over the deeper water cooling off.  There are a lot of fish in the 20-60 foot depth range but my belief is the fish feed up and are roaming closer to the top of the water than we see on the graph.  For the fish caught we ended up with more eyes caught on the shallow and therns on the deeper.

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Got out again Friday early morning and then again Sunday evening fishing on the chain...Friday morning was a bust as we tried trolling over deep water and did not get anything.  We then tried jigging raps on a weed line that treats us decent through the years and got 1 12" eye.  Sunday we tried again planning on taking a tip from a friend and trying some structure using long leaders lindy rigging...we did not get a bite despite the graph littered with fish in the 18' range.  I switched to a jigging rap and caught a 16" and a 19" in 20 minutes then we drifted off the spot while the other 2 set up jigging raps and by the time we got back to the structure the fish disappeared and we went deep water trolling back to the access.  while doing so we caught an 11" crappie over 70' of water and that was it.  Good times on the chain again!!!

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got out for a couple hours on Friday from 8pm to 10pm.  Started jig rapping on a now popular spot on middle WF and only wasted 15-20 minutes doing that before we started trolling over the deep water.  We went into Trout and trolled all the way across the lake landing 2 17.25" walleyes. One on the west side over 70' of water and the other on the east side over 120' of water.  Once again just a beautiful evening on a beautiful chain of lakes!!

wf chain sunset.jpg

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Hello. I fished a few hours Tues, Wed, and Thur mornings this week. Picked up a walleye or two each morning between 8 and 10 AM. Worked weeds and reefs in middle WF. Mornings were in the upper 40s. A little chilly. Spotted a bunch of fish, just weren't biting when I was out. I'm certain if I were on the lake by six I would have picked up a few more...but I like my rest!

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Back from the wild West boys and girls.  A great trip through the National parks and up to Jasper.  Coming back through Canada the potholes in Alberta and Sask. are full of ducks.  As you get closer to Minn.  there are very few ducks.  Tell you something.
??  Spent some time around Flathead lake in Montana.  There they treat lake trout as trash fish. Get em 30 lbs. and think there junk. Wow   Back to the lake in a week or so.  Sounds like I haven't missed much.  Leave me some.  Rayguy

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  • 'we have more fun' FishingMN Builders
4 hours ago, rayguy said:

Back from the wild West boys and girls.  A great trip through the National parks and up to Jasper.  Coming back through Canada the potholes in Alberta and Sask. are full of ducks.  As you get closer to Minn.  there are very few ducks.  Tell you something.
??  Spent some time around Flathead lake in Montana.  There they treat lake trout as trash fish. Get em 30 lbs. and think there junk. Wow   Back to the lake in a week or so.  Sounds like I haven't missed much.  Leave me some.  Rayguy

 

Most of the folk around Flathead are from the Rez.  They may not like Laker so most?  I wonder if they get good Ice on that lake? huum ?

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6 hours ago, rayguy said:

 As you get closer to Minn.  there are very few ducks.  Tell you something.
??  Spent some time around Flathead lake in Montana.  There they treat lake trout as trash fish. Get em 30 lbs. and think there junk. Wow  

 

Yes!  Quite the regional differences!

 

Sounds like a great trip though.

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welcome back rayguy! 

 

I got out for 2 hours Friday night and landed 2 eyes both 15.75" trolling across Trout.  Neither caught near each other again but what we catch is always the same size as the other fish...weird!!!  Oh well another great sunset to view!!  The fall bite should be starting soon especially with the weather and the temps dropping.  Off to the work week and back up Thursday to hopefully get out more than once this weekend!!  Good Luck

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  • 2 weeks later...

Labor day weekend had me getting out a couple times on the great WFC!  We started Friday eve trolling from Trout access and landed a 15.25" eye right in the first 5 minutes...another hour trolling produced nothing.  We then went onto WF and started checking old haunts in the shallows and found a couple more ending the night with 3.  Saturday evening had us back out on the lake and we skipped the trolling and went back to our old haunts and jig rapped a few in the box in a couple hours before dark.  Sunday we got out around 10am stopped at our spot and got nothing so went to a community spot and saw a buddy land a nice eye...bs'd for a few minutes and then headed back to landing where buddy gifted us his 3 eyes he landed from 10:30-11:30.  Overall another beautiful weekend on the great lake system!!  Bring on the fall bite!!!

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Headed back to cabin tomorrow for rest of month.  Just looked at the water temp.  and can't believe its mid 60's already.  Fall is here guys.  My neighbor at the lake texted he has been catching fish on the fall spots already.  Imagine Red Tails are at the wallet buster price.  If I get out next week a I'll write up a report.  GOOD FISHING!

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