walleye and muskie

[scoie]

I am hosting 4 guys for the weekend on Leech and they want to walleye and muskie fish. just looking for a quick update on the conditions, weeds on grand vu for muskies, and if the main lake reefs are turning on for walleyes. thanks...murph, let me know if you have a chance.

s

[Murph!]

Muskie fishing is still on the slow side. There are some fish on the rocks, evenings or some wind is a must. The weeds in some areas of the lake are lush and thick. Grand Vu and Two Points are still pretty thin. However, they do hold fish. Water temps are near 70 degrees. The whole tackle box is in play.

Walleyes are deeper now. Pulling bottom bouncers in water averaging 25 feet is putting some fish in the boat.

[Spitnargue]

Thanks for the report Murph, can you give any updates on the Pike fishing?

[Mark Benson]

spitnargue:

We fished a combo trip Sat. to this past Wednesday. Struggled to find a very good pattern for skies until the last day. Part of that struggle was to really feel comfortable with the rocks or weeds and the other part was fishing walleyes. Musky-wise, I will say though that we did move 6 fish and our other boat had one upper 30" fish on that he lost boatside.

Along the way though, the spots we fished for muskies yielded decent quantities of northern pike. There was in fact some quality involved as I lost what appeared to be a 40-ish inch fish early on the rocks. After refishing another close rock spot and catching a measured 37" fish, it became evident that I may have lost a fish that approached 45".

Our successful pattern included dive and rise baits and the best of those were 7" Cranes (replace the out of the box hooks with quality hooks, the large fish straightened the back hook) reeled under and twitched or jerked and a the 9" weighted Suick. Both baits seemed to be most successful in perch colors.

We really felt the most comfortable closest to cabbage weed and it was difficult to find decent patches of it, though our best find of this weed seemed to be in 6'-8' water in Sucker Bay and Grand View.

Again the northern pike provided us with the most action during the week, though we did find a decent bite for walleye on cranks (mostly shadraps in the 5" and 7" models in gold/black back) in the 11'-14' water depths. We did not find big numbers of fish and were able to keep most though with a few in the slot mixed in. While there we did hear from some of the experienced fishermen a bite starting to develop out at the mid-lake humps, but we weren't able to capitalize on it. Also some trolled spinner harnesses on breaks that included 8-9 feet down to 15". Again our failure (though we did have a fish fry and one man got his 4 fish limit) was in part because we split our fishing day between the 'eyes and 'skies.

Water temps reached 70* a couple of times and started around 65* the first night last Saturday. For the most part they hung around the 67*-68* range during the week into Wednesday.

If you want to complete a quality trip though, I would suggest Murph putting you on some spots early in your trip and fish from there. Good Luck and Fish Safe!!!

Mark

[Spitnargue]

Thanks Mark for the updated info. Thanks also to IAGUY and SKRIETE; the info shared is very much appreciated. We are leaving for Leech in a couple of hours and I will give a fishing report back after our trip.

[scoie]

Tough weekend. the May Fly hatch was thick. We caught fish on the edges of the main lake reefs with bottom bouncers and spinners...but we worked for them and they were mostly in the 20-24" range. Mokey, Ivins, and places in between.

we spent just a few hours muskie fishing one morning and moved 3 fish in agency and narrows area. bull dawgs.

there were 40+ boats on sand one night but did not stop or see a report...an idea if its going now?

s

--btw, i stopped up a two points for about an hour and casted while looking at my gps spots and thw weeds looked very good. more cabbage than i recall vs. thin stuff. --no fish, but not much time in either...my thought is it should be good up there post 4th.