Fishing Report July 2010
July 23-25, 2010
Surface temperatures on Woman Lake reached 75 degrees on Saturday, and that is about as warm as this lake will get. Algae can easily be seen as tiny green specks floating through the water column and the lake water has changed from it's normal crystal clear cobalt blue tint to a less clear shade of blue-green. The lake is still quite clear, but not like earlier in the season when you could see the bottom 20 feet down. This change will generally help the walleye fishing, but this lake doesn't seem to need any help. The walleye bite was hot over the weekend with easy to find fish who were ready and willing to take a leech. I hooked six walleyes in 90 minutes on Saturday afternoon and hooked eight walleyes in two hours mid-day Sunday under bright skies. My walleyes were all in the 14-16 inch range, perfect eating size, so I kept a few to fry up for dinner.
The fish were located shallow at 15-17 feet on Saturday when it was mostly overcast and breezy, but on Sunday they had dropped down to the 21-23 foot range with the flat water, clear skies, and bright sun. The fish were easy to mark on my depth sounder and I saw fish most every where I looked. The edges of the big bar in the center of Woman Lake, Spains Point, the big bar south of the entrance to Lantern Bay, Airplane Bar, and various sunken islands in the west central half of the lake all held walleyes along the breaks. I also marked a caught some nice big bluegills in deeper water where the sand transitions to mud. You can see them on your sounder. Drop down a lindy rig with a small hook tipped with a chuck of nightcrawler or small leech, and they will find you.
July 2 - 11, 2010 - Fourth of July Week
Walleye fishing remained strong during the first week of July as our fish remained settled in typical mid-summer patterns. I caught more small fish (14-16 inches) in shallower waters 14-17 feet this week, but everything else stayed the same. Sometimes it is difficult to mark these fish on the sounder, due to the seeming overabundance of schools of baitfish clouding the depthfinder screen. I have never seen this much forage in Woman Lake at this stage of the season and I am a little surprised the walleye bite remains strong. With all that food swimming around, I would think fishing would get more difficult. Every walleye I cleaned to eat had a stomach chock full of 1 inch perch, yet they were still willing to bite leeches. That works for me.
Eventually, the walleye bite will likely slow down a little as we reach mid-to-late summer, however my experience on this lake is you can catch walleyes virtually every week of the year. Last year, July and August was excellent fishing, only to be surpassed by September. I am still fishing main lake points and bars in the 19-23 foot ranges, but always take a peek up on top of your structure in the 13-16 range (just inside the deep weedline) especially in the early morning and evenings. Trolling crankbaits over shallow flats and the tops of points and bars is probably going to be a successful pattern soon, if not already. I need to give that a try some evening.