Another opening day has come on gone. Friday night was the same as the past 50 years; trouble sleeping again, too much anticipation. It is a great feeling knowing a person can be excited at 55 years old so much so that you don't sleep well. Part of it is thoughts of openers past, the first time going with my Dad on opening day. That one was not on Rainy Lake believe it or not. We went to Lake Vermilion with a friend of my Dad's named Cubby Johnson. I remember it being pretty cold and damp. Cubby had a boat with a hard covered bow. I found it pretty cool to be able to crawl up underneath to get warm and might of snoozed a little.
This year I opened the season with my friend Dan and his friend Bob. We left the dock at 7:30 AM. Dan asked if we could head up to Kettle Falls as Bob had only been there by snowmobile. Beautiful, a little cool ride up the lake. We arrived about 8:15. There was a half dozen boats fishing an old haunt called Jesse's hole. We proceeded up to my grandfather'ss old dock site at Kettle Falls. We fished for forty minutes or saw and had some good snags and no bites. My friends Patti Ross and Mark Bowe were in the area also. We saw them catch a couple of nice keepers, said they were using red and blue jigs. Good patriots! We moved down river and really did not see what I like to see on the Hummingbird.
We moved out of the river and looked on some deeper breaklines. Surprise, surprise, we saw a lot of fish in thirty four feet of water. We dropped the IPilot down and started jigging. Walleye almost right away then not a lot. I could still see the fish so I opted to switch from a colored jig to a plain lead color. There were small clouds of bait fish in the area. Normally these baitfish are a small silvery grey baitfish less than an inch long. If those baitfish are what I am really seeing a lead color jig works better because it matches the color of the bait fish. I like lead for another reason too, it will never hurt you, often catching more than colored jigs.
My jig barely hit bottom and bingo a walleye hit right away. After a couple more and Bob and Dan switched to lead colored jigs and we were all catching walleyes. I moved the boat forward with my I Pilot and positioned the boat on the front edge of the school and hit my anchor button. It is really an amazing piece of equipment. The wind got up 10-15 miles per hour and the Minn Kota held us right in place. We casted straight back behind the boat as far as we could and let the jigs sink to the bottom. We jus barely hopped them along the bottom working them all the way back to the boat. We caught twenty five plus walleyes using this technique. We kept twelve nice walleyes from 14-16 1/2 inches, and the largest we let go was 24 3/4 inches. When we got back to Rainy Lake Houseboats I cleaned the walleyes and sure enough full of the small silvery baitfish and a good amount of the chubs that came off our jigs as we would reel in the walleyes.
We stopped in a shallow bay on the way home and pitched jigs and minnows and also used slip bobbers and minnows with out success. All in all a great day on beautiful Rainy Lake.
Fight is on!
The limit!
24 3/4" walleye
