Following a week of extraordinary northern activity and average walleye activity, we were hoping for improvements with the latter, and that’s exactly what we got. Walleye turned on towards the end of the week, and the bait of choice was leeches with crawlers landing in second place. Surface water temps are into the upper 60’s and occasionally breaking into the low 70’s, with the calm winds we have been having the top of the water column is warming up fast, once we get some wind and stir things up it will bring those surface temps down a notch.

Look for walleye on the edges of rocky humps, bumps and break-lines, a lot of the time the sharper break the better. The bigger the rocks you can locate the better your odds are going to be, they really like to hold tight to structure and big boulders are the perfect hiding spot. Rigging leeches and crawlers with spinners, slow-death hooks or plain hook Lindy rigs are the way to go right now, focus your attack on water in the 10-16 foot range during the day, they are moving shallower during low light periods so don’t be afraid to fish 4-6 feet of water.

Pictured below from L to R: The Rogers and Poldervaart families from Des Moines and Fort Dodge, Iowa with their “old vs young” fishing tournament results. The oldies edged out the young by 1 point, even though the young caught more walleye (I think they need to re-work their scoring system) Jonah Rogers from Des Moines, IA with a 21 inch walleye.

Winds have been blowing out of the south-east the last few days, making area’s around Ottertail Point, Two Points and up into the sand beach area of Portage bay good, also the west side of Sucker Bay has been producing, Hardwood Point, up to Deadhead Bay, make sure to bring lots of bait, the pike are still very active and eating anything that passes them. The hump out front as we call it, has also been well above average, along with the humps in front of Horseshoe Bay Resort, and Blacks Reef off of Grassy Point. Anglers can easily catch limits of walleye within a couple of stones throws from our channel.

Trolling has been working too, not as many walleye have moved out onto the reefs yet, but the fish that are out there seem to be mostly slot fish, while catching a 25 inch walleye is great fun, it doesn’t end up where most people would like it. Reef fishing should improve drastically as the water temps get into the 70’s.

Below are a few shots of a family of loons that are taking up residence in Uram Bay – pictures by Justin Rogers.

Muskie fishing is really starting to heat up, I’ve had reports of active fish chasing lures to the boat, even attacking small walleye and perch that are being reeled in, I was out with a couple of friends to do a little musky hunting, while fishing with Justin and Isaac we were primarily out to get some video with Justin’s quadcopter drone, and while doing so we managed to catch a little excitement in the process, we didn’t get a bite or boat a fish, but the copter managed to catch a follow I had all the way to the boat. With the drones limited battery life, we were very impressed. Below you can see a short clip of the action.

The Cabela’s National Walleye tour was in town over the weekend, as I had mentioned last week – Brad Dirkman from Underwood, MN edged out all other pros to take home over $60,000 in prize money, including a Ranger boat, with a 2 day total of 26.83 lbs – First place in the Co-angler division went to Jay Carroll from Laporte, MN he took home just under $7,000. The tournament was a huge success, and a wonderful addition to the Leech Lake areas 2015 summer season.

Below are a couple short video’s – an aerial tour of our harbor, the other of a musky that was almost fooled into biting.

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Ray