With the recent temperatures warming our local lakes the fish have become very aggressive but can be very selective. Keep changing baits and presentations until you find what works, and when it “slows” down start trying new things! The schools I was finding were all walleyes roaming saddles between sunken islands and were moving fast and if you caught one or two, they would move 50-100 feet in seconds. The previous day’s bite was a plain lindy rig with a night crawler. Started with that, nothing. Soon I was changing to something different on the lindy rig until I found they wanted the jig and leech.
Walleyes are starting to slide into mid lake structure but are not too far from the baitfish. Our best action came in that 10-14 feet of water on the edges of weed lines or sharp breaks. Walleyes were also over mid like sunken islands roaming but I believe they were just following bait fish because they were very suspended on top of structure. Small jigs with a leech worked best but when the wind picked up casting jigs with soft plastics produced fish also. When it was calm the walleyes were very spooky of the boat and longer casts were key to get away from the boat or lighter jigs to coax them into biting.
Bass were near cabbage, and I don’t claim to be a bass guy but our best luck came on hair jigs pitching near cabbage. Clumps of cabbage are holding fish and after a few casts move onto the next clump but save them on the GPS for later because they might be more active in the afternoon.
Bluegills were out deeper on the lakes I was fishing and we vertical jigged them with small jigs tipped with a piece of night crawler. I couldn’t believe it but we were catching bluegills full of eggs getting ready to spawn. We would cover water trolling with a night crawler till we would find the schools then spot lock on top and vertical jig them. Since we were out deeper, we didn’t have to move too often, and the fish were not spooked with the boat on top of them.
Cody Hill
ᴄʜɪʟʟɢᴜɪᴅᴇꜱᴇʀᴠɪᴄᴇ.ᴄᴏᴍ
218-443-3813