Frank
and his partner Tony rented our two - person boat for a weeks fishing on Rainy
Lake. Frank and Tony like to fish with artificial baits. We started in the weedy
bays casting for northern. We saw what Frank called “zoomers” small pike
flashing like lightning at the Johnson Silver Minnow.
We
moved out into Cranberry Bay looking for new cabbage growth. We found really
nice looking cabbage, Tony hooked up a smallmouth on his buzz bait and soon
after a nice pike that looked to be in the 32” range. Tony’s lone broke and
away he went. We moved to a pencil reed area close to the deeper water, we saw
fish surfacing but no interested parties. We did not have a breath of wind.
We
moved to the first reefs outside the bays bordering the deeper water. Frank
switched to a fire tiger Husky Jerk, I put a chrome black ribbed Rat’l Trap on
Tony line. We started catching nice large walleyes on the reefs but no pike. We
kept moving to new reefs outside the bays and continued to catch walleyes along
with nice smallmouth.
We
moved to a current area and fished the downstream side of wing dams and points.
Walleyes were in pretty good along with some really nice smallmouth.
smallmouth bass with #14 Husky Jerk
On
day two we had a breeze blowing right away. I took Tony and Frank to a
different area. We started on outer islands of a fairly large bay. Frank’s
first cast he hooked up with a good pike about 36” long. The fish had his Husky
Jerk cross ways in its mouth. Right before our eyes the fish open his mouth and
let the bait go. I really thought Frank
had a good hook set, goes to show you never know.
Tony
had a big pike take a pass and missed the Rat’l Trap. The walleyes were thick
and active. Walleyes are great fun on crank baits and Jerk Baits. Wind is huge
for all day action, if you don’t have wind fish the early morning hours and
evenings with artificial baits.
We
lot our wind totally. We went jigging with minnows in the current and caught
more walleyes that were legal to keep for dinner.
