Another day of trying something new turned out successful. I hit the water with two buddies early this morning hoping to find walleye on a completely new section of river. Replicating the vertical jigging technique that has proven successful elsewhere, we were in search of mostly wood but in reality any irregularity that might hold fish.
Throughout the course of the day we picked up 25 walleye, a dozen smallmouth bass, some perch, and loads of rockbass. We found that white was the hot color for pretty much the entire day and a steady hand caught more fish a jigging one. Over the course of about 7 miles, we fished a few dozen spots. Of all the spots, probably 75% of them held walleye.
While that sounds like a lot of places to catch fish, we passed over so many that looked decent but had to keep chugging. The mission of the day was to explore and that’s what we did. While we didn’t fish every spot possible, we fished the obvious and ideal looking ones and just marked the others with way points.
We found that the smallest walleye were holding in deep water (30’+) while the larger fish were in between 12-20′. From 20-30′ was mostly a dead zone other than the large and aggressive pods of rockbass.
Great picture of the scar in the back on the one gill. Looks like you guys had fun.
It certainly looked painful!
Animals amaze me in their ability to heal themselves. Makes you realize how fragile we are as humans. Nice job finding the new holes. If you ever get over to MI check out Lake St. Clair, nice walleyes and smallies.
Fish are amazing that is for sure! I am headed to MN this winter to fish. MI is also on the hit list for one of these trips!