Fishing Report June 16-19

[Hockey Guy]

Now that I have the boat-landing debacle off my chest, I will give my fishing report to all the artificial lure guys out there. I have never really liked to use live bait unless absolutely necessary (too boring for me). The lake was busier than I have ever witnessed in my 27 years of fishing it 3-5 times a year, so the closest campsite I found was the Wolf Pack site on Namakan. I was very lucky to find that site because the previous campers had just pulled away. There were probably as many people camping on un-official sites as official ones!

Anyhow, I’m not the greatest speller in the world so you will have to bear with me. Thursday night I started out casting shorelines around McManus and the Alligator islands. I only picked up two Northern and two small Bass so I started trolling at dusk. I had one other guy with me so we had on a shallow and deep runner. We picked up a nice 6 lbs. Northern on the deep diver over 40 feet of water just north of Wolf Pack. We moved out to the deep water just west of Junction Bay and picked up two nice Walleye. One 23” fish over 75’ of water, and one 25” fish over 65’ just north of whale rock.

Friday morning was not friendly to us. We started casting shorelines and rock piles all morning and found only a few Northern and couple Bass again. Late in the afternoon my fishing buddy wanted to live bait for Walleye so we checked out some deep sides of reefs out on Namakan. We only got 7 eyes in about three hours of doing that and only 1 keeper. We moved to Moose Bay and started trolling raps again. The bay is pretty weedy already so we both had shallow runners on. We picked up 6 Walleye (2 keepers) and 4 average size Northern (3-5 lbs.).

Saturday we started out casting shorelines in Moose Bay and had a lot of fun with the little Northern and Bass. It was pretty calm back there because the wind had shifted and was now coming from the SE. We were only catching fish on the wind blown shorelines. We moved over to Kohler Bay and had absolutely no luck casting even though it was blowing back there pretty good. We did get one 20” Walleye in the VERY weedy 4’ of water in the way back of Kohler as we trolled shallow raps out of there. We moved over to Lost Bay on Kab because I thought the wind would be blowing in there. From 3 PM to 5 PM we nailed Walleye and Northern back in Long Slough casting shallow raps. Every 5-6 casts one of us would pick up a fish. The Walleye were almost all too big to keep but we did manage another two keepers that were 16.5” and 16.75”. It was a lot of fun but it just turned off at 5:00. I wish I would have gone back there earlier in the day. Again, the fish were only hitting when the wind was blowing hard enough to make the boat difficult to control. Saturday night trolled raps in Moose again and picked up a few more eyes but on 1 keeper.

Sunday morning we pretty much just played around in the sun and packed up camp. It was a beautiful weekend up there. Decent fishing and a lot of sun!