Report from Rainy 6/18 - 6/24

[soupy]

A few months ago I asked for some basic information on the lake and was given a few tips, some were helpful, some weren't.

Here's how the week went.

Black Bay - we caught walleye from 14-23 inches on various color shad raps fishing the windy sides of the central islands in the bay. Our best fishing was by far from 4:30 am to 7 am.

Saginaw Bay - we caught some walleye from the humps near duckfoot island. We were aboe to graph alot of fish, but most were not active. The majority seemd to be holding near 14-16 ft of water.

Brulles Narrows - we caught walleye near the south end of the narrows were the large flat is. Mostly we drifted nightcrawlers and leeches. The fishing was not fantastic, but we filled 5 limits there one day.

Redgut Bay - we found active walleye on the main humps in 10-12 feet of water. All caught on chartruese jigheads with leeches.

Alexandria Bay - the smallies are in the middle of the spawn and we hammered them on leeches with circle hooks and split shots 2-10 feet from the bank. One half-day we caught 17 fish that were over 3 lbs. My seven year old son caught a 4lb. 9 oz. fish that will soon grace his bedroom wall.

I loaded Fishing Hot maps in my Garmin Map60C GPS before we left and even made most of the routes I used to get to Alexandria and redgut from the comfort of my home computor, truly a fantastic investment. I was able to run the lake like I'd been on it my whole life.

Many people we talked to said that the fishing was fair to poor. For the most part, I found those folks to be unprepared and/or unwilling to move from the few locations they had found fish on past trips.

We'll be back next year, your fish ain't that tough to figure out.

Soupy

[dasfooter]

Nice work Soupy,

I have been going to Rainy for 9 years and owned a place in the Fall's for 2 summers and I haven't even seen 1/2 this lake (North Arm) - that's the beauty of of it, if you get on this lake before studying a map you could have some long quite days.

Dasfooter

[GoodToGo]

Thanks for the good report. I am heading up Thursday and it's good to hear someone catching fish. Sounds like they're pretty scattered right now.

[plogsdon]

Soupy,

How long did it take you to make up to Alex. Bay? Were you staying close to FF. I have stayed in Rainier and was wondering how far, long of trip it would be to try some of that smallie fishing. Thanks Phil

[bitz]

Plog, depending on the boat, I would suggest you give your self about 2 hrs from the 5 mile dock to the middle of ash bay. 1850 ashbay can give you a better answer as he has a place there. I do know that someone told me that from the gun going off until the guy had a line in the water at Devil's Cascades was less the 45 mins and that has to be close to 50 miles (assume you don't have a boat that fast)

[soupy]

My GPS showed 27 miles from Thunderbird Marina to the entrance to Alexandria Bay, North of Woodchuck island. We made the run in about 50 minutes.

We made Redgut in a bit less, also from T-bird.

I used the sailing line and secondary sailing line on the Hotspot maps to make my route. They were right on the money.

Soupy

[plogsdon]

Thanks for the info. Phil