Fishing Report May 2018
May 22-23, 2018
The Woman Lake water continues to warm up and so does the walleye bite. We now beginning to see some bigger fish (16-22") become more active, but we still have caught none over 4lbs yet. We are also beginning to see some walleye location movement off the shoreline structures onto a few of the main lake reefs and bars. We also got some bites on leeches for the first time this spring.
I will be out of town over the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, which is traditionally the start of really excellent walleye fishing on Woman Lake, and that solid bite typically lasts through the month of June. I will be back on the lake by the middle of next week, and we are expecting the bite to continue improving as long as the weather cooperates.
May 18-21, 2018
The weather is still outstanding with the exception of a few days with high winds, and the hot small walleye bite continues. Surface water temps have now risen to the mid 50s, but the bigger walleyes have remained elusive for us so far. It won't be long before the bigger fish show up. I have not tried it, but long line trolling crankbaits over the shoreline sand flats at night might be your best bet for larger walleyes. All the fish we have found have been on shore related structure so far, as you might expect.
May 12-16, 2018
The weather for the walleye opener was the best I have ever experienced with warm sunny days, light winds, and no rain or snow. We found that the walleyes are a few weeks behind their normal patterns because of the late ice out and cold water temperatures, but the small walleyes were readily biting. We had no problems catching limits of small fish, but we had to catch a lot of small "throwbacks" to get to the keepers. None of our fish were big with the largest one around 16 inches, so I suspect the larger fish will become more active as the water warms. We had surface temperatures around 50 degrees on Saturday in the main lake with water a couple degrees warmer in the smaller bays. The crappie bite in the black bottom bays is still hot.
May 10-11, 2018
Spring is here and the crappie bite is in full swing. We are hearing reports of limits of keeper crappies in the traditional locations (black bottom bays, harbors, and inlets) throughout the local area lakes. Child Lake and Girl Lake are both producing plenty of nice crappies, and I suspect Mule Lake and Blackwater Lake are doing so as well. Personally, we found our fish in shallow black bottom, cattail lined bays in about 3-6 feet of water. We haven't found any real big ones yet, but the 10-12 inch crappies are feeding aggressively, along with a few chunky largemouth bass. Our method was simply fishing small fathead minnows about 24 inches under a cork, and casting towards the cattails and working it slowly back to the boat. Deep fried beer batter crappie filets rank right up there alongside walleye filets in my book.
May 9, 2018
The ice finally left Woman Lake on Monday afternoon 5/7/18 which is about 3 weeks later than normal. We experienced a remarkably fast ice melt over the last 2 weeks with some days as warm as 80 degrees, so we are fortunate to have open water for the Walley Opener on Saturday. The weather forecast looks beautiful for the weekend and into next week, so we are anticipating a good walleye bite. Get your fishing gear ready, the season is upon us. I visited the Boy River DNR Walleye Spawning Trap site a couple weeks ago to watch them harvest the spawn and send the fertilized eggs off to the hatchery. In about 3 weeks, millions of those hatched walleye eggs will be put back into Woman Lake as inch long walleye fry, as well as other local lakes on the Boy River system, including Leech Lake. I will put a few 2018 walleye trap pictures in the "Catch Photos" section of this website.