Quick Fishing Report Sand Point

[danfall]

I was on a houseboat last week and wanted to fill everyone in on how we did.

We caught quite a few northerns, none over 5#. They were taking minnows on bobbers, but miserably slow and I only caught a couple casting through thousands of casts I made, but caught lots with bobbers. Typical lazy pike stuff. I ran topwater suicks one day and either I was fast or the fish were slow because they constantly were missing the hit and I got none. I expect it was the fish because I slowed down after the first misses. Fun to watch them blow straight out of the water, though. I saw a lot of surfacing fish throughout the week, betting on bass and northerns.

I caught walleyes fairly well on the 23rd and the 27th, taking about 8 fish each day, reducing about 1/2 to possession by the slot. I had fish on both sides of the slot. The walleyes were miserably slow. I fed more minnows through biteoffs than most people care to imagine and should have run a stinger, but was too lazy to make that effort. I was disappointed in the numbers of walleyes I saw on Sandpoint and while there I watched a USGS netting crew gillnet walleyes and was not impressed with their numbers either, although they told me Browns Bay was the best they had done on Sandpoint. I fished near their nets and got skunked after a few hours.

Surface temperatures ranged from 59 on our arrival 9/23 to 57.5 on our departure. The thermocline was still very defined in Staege Bay at 16', for example.

Recommendations are to slow the fishing approach and work for walleyes on sharp breaks on rocky points from 19-22' using slip bobbers or jigging. Most strikes occurred less than 1' from the bottom which makes slip bobbers tough unless you mark a lot of fish, and explains why I didn't see many fish on the sonar. Strongly consider a stinger hook, I would have doubled my catch with one.

Oh yeah, I've caught a few big walleyes during my life and I know its a fish story, but I missed a big one this time. It was in the 8# range, and my #4 hook and #6 test line got cut on its teeth... It was the only fish on the over 23" we had on the whole week. Hope the hook doesn't kill it.