Fishing Report June 2017

June 22-29, 2017

The walleye bite on Woman Lake remains excellent, with daily limits of very nice fish being the norm.  The fishing has been remarkable since opening weekend, but this probably won't last forever, so come on up and get your line wet.  I also took a six day fishing/camping trip up into Voyager's National Park and the fishing there was excellent, too, at least on the days we could fish.  It was a very wet, windy, and cold wilderness type trip and unfortunately half the days were simply unfishable.

June 13-16, 2017

Walleye fishing on Woman Lake continues with a very hot bite on days when the lake is fishable.  We have had a couple days where winds or storms or bug hatches have kept us off the lake, but otherwise we have generally caught limits of keeper walleyes virtually every day since the walleye opener.  This is the best start to a walleye fishing season that I have seen on Woman Lake.  The winds were gusting 20-25 mph yesterday, but we still had 12 nice eaters (15-19 inches) before noon.  Today, we caught plenty of eating size walleyes before noon as well as a number of fish over 20 inches including a couple 27.5 and 25.5 inch walleyes. Surface temperature has reached the 68-69 degree range and it is warm enough to comfortably swim.  The walleyes have definitely begun their move to mid-basin structures like middle lake reefs, bars, and sunken islands, and we are finding them in the 16-19 foot depths over both sand and rock bottoms.

June 4-8, 2017

Unseasonably hot weather has really jumpstarted water temperatures on Woman Lake over this last week with surface temperatures now in the 65-66 degree range.  It also jumpstarted a massive mayfly hatch on June 4-5 which pretty much shut down the walleye bite for a couple days.  I do not recall seeing a bug hatch of this magnitude before on this lake, leaving large mats of mayflies and casings covering much of the lake surface.  It must have been a feeding frenzy under water with minnows chasing the bugs, perch chasing the minnows, and walleyes chasing the perch, because nothing was biting on fishing lines.  The effects of the bug hatch had mostly ended by Wednesday, as we caught 10 keeper walleyes (up to 20 inches) before noon.  We continue to find the walleyes on shoreline related sand breaks in 19-22 feet of water as well as on medium shallow rock piles in the 13-15 foot depths.  We have now started seeing baby loon chicks riding on mom's back, looking like black fuzzy golf balls that can already swim and make short dives.