How's Your Fishing Prowess Been?

[BobT]

This forum has been pretty quiet lately so I thought I'd start a discussion to see where it takes us. Is it just me or have others had a similar experience this past year? Quite honestly my fishing success this year was not something to write home about. I'm primarily a walleye fisherman and my main mode of attack is a jig and minnow or jig and leech. About two weeks before the MN fishing opener in May, a friend and I did visit Lake Traverse on the SD/MN border and did quite well. That gave me a pretty good feeling going into the open water season but alas it was cut short rather quickly. I struggled to connect with walleyes all summer this year. Was on Vermilion for the opener and we struggled to find enough for a fish fry. Spent the next two weekends on Leech and got the same results. Then we took a trip to Rainy and again we really had to work to put together a fish fry. After that a friend and I went to Winnibigoshish and caught one fish all day, a 23-1/2" walleye but that was it. Couple weeks after that we tried West Battle lake and although we did find a few fish (couple rock bass, small mouth, couple northerns, and a couple sunnies), walleyes were not being cooperative at all. Add to that a few trips to my local Lake Osakis and other area lakes and I really struggled. I did get a couple here and there but they were definitely sparse to say the least. I even tried pulling cranks and Lindy rigs and even tried artificials with virtually no success. 

 

Anyone else have similar experiences or is it just me? Any thoughts? Was it weather, low water conditions, water temp, other?  

[Dash 1]

I definitely agree on this past year as well. I too target walleye more often than not and struggled as well. I do know those with the newer electronics were doing much better than I, but I just can’t justify the money at the moment.  Maybe it was the heat, or drought. Maybe it’s the pressure with more anglers out on the lakes.  I don’t know if we’ll ever know the definite answer, but then again it is called fishing not catching. I’m just mainly happy to be able to get out there and wish it could be more often, although my wife might think I am out plenty already.  I told my brother the last time we were out, we probably do not try enough different ways and rely on what we are comfortable with.  That is what I need to change in the future. 

Good luck fishing......and catching.

[Wanderer]

I had the opposite experience for the little bit of time I was able to fish over the summer.  Seemed like I could do no wrong.  And that was a big improvement over the year before.

 

Never used live bait at all and caught anything I targeted with some good sized fish.  Not huge but nice.

 

What I found odd for a hot drought year was I couldn’t catch anything deeper than about 18 feet and most were quite a bit shallower.  Walleyes we’re consistently shallow for me and hammering the stick baits and swim baits.  Crappies were the deepest.

 

I fished a mixture of rivers and small lakes stretching from central MN to the Boundary Waters and mostly from my kayak.  Only once did I fish from a motorized boat with all modern electronics - and that was the poorest success day.  I’ll admit I had a depth finder in my kayak that helped locate fish on lakes but otherwise everything was kept basic/simple.  
 

It was some of the best fishing I’ve had in the past few years.