Sunday, July 1, 2012

Walleye Wars June 24-26, 2012




We left port about 3:00 PM and headed east on a twenty-five mile cruise.  We had the Chairman II, Lady II, and Lady III along with twenty-one guests and. We arrived about 6:30 PM and secured the houseboats to shore tying them together so you can step from boat to boat. Chef Jim and Bernie prepared a wonderful chicken and Rib dinner. Fishing would not begin until Wednesday morning.

Rainy Lake Houseboats guides, Joey Dougherty, Jon Balaski, Bill Dougherty, Kevin Erickson, Matt Shermoen, Ryan Schmidt, and Bruce Jean arrived by 7:30 AM.  Here was a nice breeze blowing. Anticipation was running high! The guides headed to different areas, some fished islands surrounded by deepwater, others fished shallows, and some fished points. Fishing was super, we used jigs and minnow or jigs and a piece of crawler.




The islands produced walleyes from 14-22 feet; reef tops were good mainly from 17-22 feet. Points had walleyes going from 27-30 feet. Shallow water had lots of fish from 6-to 8 feet in narrows and points.  Our wind started to die down and fishing slowed. We met back at the houseboats for a famous Rainy Lake shorelunch.
Many years ago the old time guides must have had tough fishing and had to improvise a lunch without walleyes. They took the bacon they had and fried it up, took the onion and sliced them into slices about 1/8” thick. The lemons were cut into wedges then squeezed on the onion slices. The slices were then seasoned with salt and pepper. The white bread slices were buttered. The guides put the slices of onion on the bread then three or four pieces of bacon and another slice of bread on top. Rainy Lakes famous onion and bacon sandwich was born! Our shorelunch has bacon and onion sandwiches for appetizers, fried walleye, baked beans, and fried potatoes.

90 degrees temps moved in with no wind. Guides fished for bass, walleyes, and northern pike. Buzz baits provided good action in the weeds for pike. Walleyes bit but slower than morning. 

Thursday looked to be another beautiful day on Rainy Lake. Winds had switched to the west and were supposed to top out at 20 mph.  We decided to fish weed edges and points in shallow water in the different bays. Fishing was good with both jigs and minnows on points, crawler harnesses worked quite well on the weed edges. Speed trolling Husky Jerks in 6-8 feet was excellent also.

The afternoon was slow fish had moved off of the morning structures. Bill Dougherty boat did not have a fish at 4:00 PM. He opted to try a shallow rock saddle between to islands that also had a good size cabbage bed. Louie caught a nice Eye right away on a Northland Tackle Silver Shiner Bait Fish Crawler Harness. A couple minutes later he hammered another. Bill switched Steve and Don to the same set up. We ended up boating 23 walleyes and a couple dandy bass in ninety minutes.