Fishing Report May 2020
May 22, 2020
The water temperatures on Woman Lake have climbed up to the 55-56 degree range, and the walleye bite is very solid when the winds and weather allow fishing. We continue to find some very nice 21-24 inch walleyes most every day, along with plenty of 16-19 inch keeper size for the fry pan, along with a few keeper size perch. For now, the morning walleye bite has been more active than the afternoon or evening bite. We are finding the walleyes in the same locations and depths as last week. We switched to fishing with shiner minnows (once we found some), and we are still catching plenty of larger northern pike 26-31 inches in the same locations as the walleyes. If we have decent fishable weather, this bite will continue to improve up through mid-June. You can check out photos of some of our fish in the Catch Photos section of this website.
May 16, 2020
The weather has begun to warm up and so has the walleye bite. Water temps on Woman Lake have risen 2-3 degrees this week, and we are catching some real nice 21-24 inch fish, along with some 15-18 inch keeper sizes and plenty of smaller 12-14 inchers, too. The fish are staged in traditional post spawn locations, mostly on shore related sand breaks and shore related points in 17-18 feet of water, although we have caught some as deep as 24 feet. Most all of the fish we are catching, we have spotted on the depth sounder. We are primarily fishing rainbow chubs on live bait rigs (think Lindy Rig), and any time you fish this lake with a minnow, the dinner bell rings for the northern pike. We are catching plenty of nice northern pike on our walleye locations. The coming weather forecast is for continued increasing daily temperatures, so I expect the bite to get even better if the weather is stable. I hope we can get a chance to chase some slab crappies, as well, this week.
May 10, 2020 MN Walleye Opener Weekend
I have been cold and wet on many MN Walleye Openers before, but this year's opener may take the cake. Water temperatures were right at 50 degrees on Woman Lake, but the air temperature was well below freezing when we started out and it was still only 33 degrees at 1:00 PM. We also fished through a heavy snowstorm that lasted 4+ hours and had 2-3 inches of snow accumulated in the bottom of my boat before noon. It certainly was not very pleasant weather conditions, however the winds were light and manageable. We did catch a some very nice walleyes, the biggest being a fat 23.5 incher, but it was clearly a slower bite for us compared to typical walleye opener weekends. We easily marked fish on the depth sounder, right in the locations we expected, but the walleyes were sometimes reluctant to take out baits. We saw a lot of fish on the sounder, so once we get some milder weather (and the forecast is for warmer weather this week), I think the fishing bite will get hot.