Fishing Report June 2024

June 27, 2024

Sorry, but no fishing report this week as I had to drive down to the Twin Cities for some minor flood control reasons.  Hope to be back on Woman Lake this weekend.  Also hope the extended string of mayfly hatches have ended.

June 20, 2024

We have had two major mayfly hatches on Woman Lake this week, so the walleye bite has been hit or miss, along with an unfishable day Tuesday with very heavy rain.  We are catching 7-8 walleyes one day, then 0-1 the next, then 2-4 the next day. Very mixed results with very mixed weather.  Today's big mayfly hatch looked like the ephemerellas (species genus) which are the huge ones 4+ inches long, and they are typically the final major hatch on Woman Lake for the spring season.  We caught walleyes today, but not many, and not big ones, all in the 14-16 inch range.  We are still fishing minnows (red tail chubs or shiners) and the northern pike are still agressive.  If the big bug hatches are now truly finished, then I predict the better walleye bite will quickly shift to leeches or crawlers.  Pray for some stable weather, we are due for a little.  If we get some decent weather, the bite will turn on.

June 10, 2024

We had another major mayfly hatch June 5th and 6th, as well as a couple of days of heavy winds and rain, which kept the walleye bite on hold last week.  We are now starting to catch a few more walleyes since the mayflys have abated and we've enjoyed a couple days of stable weather.  The northern pike have been quite agressive too, partially because we are still fishing shiner minnows, which they love.  I expect leeches and crawlers will start outfishing the shiners for walleyes, in the next week or so, but right now it is still primarily a minnow bite.  We did catch a 19+ inch smallmouth bass on Friday, that was maybe the fattest bass I have ever seen.

June 3, 2024

Water temperatures are in the 61-63 degree range now, depending on whether it is sunny or not.  We are still awaiting a stable weather pattern to get the walleye bite up to normal June standards.  June 2nd and 3rd we had a big mayfly hatch which put a serious damper on walleye for a few days.  We were finding plenty of fish on the depth sounder, but they were not interested in biting.  We typically get four major mayfly hatches each spring from late May until late June, and that was our first of the season.  Bass should be coming off the spawning beds soon, so start looking for the smallmouth to head towards the rock structures.