Butts Kicked on Vermilion

I find on big water it is very tempting to start fishing before you are marking really well. I have a buddy who must have his line in the water ASAP and I have gone for hours at 5 mph running a shoreline or 6 before marking enough fish to bother with. This can be trouble if the fish are shallow or holding bottom hard, but in general with two boats, one should be looking and one should be fishing the looks. I can recall cruising for marks on Mille Lacs one year and coming over the top of log city on my depth finder. We caught 10 big fish before the posse found us and my buddy was peeing seated waving at the girls in the boat next to us (he refused to let me drive off). Another time I was cruising out to the main lake through a 6 mile long side lake and about 1/4 mile before the main lake I started marking fish for about 1/8 of a mile nonstop. I turned around and dropped lines and caught about 100 lake trout in 3 hours (2 of us).

I got my … handed to me this year. I won’t say where, but I fished 4 hours Sat, 8 Sun, 8 Mon, 8 Tue, 8 Wed and caught 4 walleyes. Different approaches different areas. Even marked fish. On Thursday I did not fish – too poed. Friday morning I went to get some bait and the kid at the bait tank says, I suppose you used all your bait up on that hot bite yesterday. He proceeded to tell me the fish were nonstop for them on Thursday and Thursday nite storms came through. I caught 3 fish all day Friday. Point I’m trying to make is fish can go for days neutral or off, then kapow!! It was my worst week of fishing in history. Sometimes the best thing to do is go cast for northerns when things are bad.

U gotta find em
U gotta fish em
They gotta wanna eat and it can’t coincide with your buddies bar run.

Nathan boring wrote:

I went up to vermillion for the time ever Friday morning. We stayed at fortune bay and fished for bass most of the day and walleyes at night. Friday fishing was really good. Caught around 25 <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>bass and then fished a reef in the evening for walleye and caught 11. All fish were 12 to 15 inches. Saturday went to same reef and only got 2 <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>walleyes and only caught about 10 bass. Sunday morning went out from 8 to 11 before we went home and caught 7 more. Friday the fish were in 14 to 17 feet. Sunday they were in 21 to 24 feet. I outfished my buddy 7 to 0 Sunday. I was using pink hook gold bead with a crawler he was using lindy with a red hook and no bead and never got a bite. CRAZY!!! I will definitely be back. Was an awesome lake!!!

Good report Nathan, how big we’re the smallmouth and how did you catch them?

Most were in the 15 inch range and biggest was 18.5. We got them throwing tubes

About to head out onto the lake with a group of convention buddies. I am out at fortune bay casino, should be an interesting morning.I have not fished this side of the lake very often and without much success.We have several guides who will have 3 of us per boat,will be fun just fishing and have someone else be boat captain.

I have a feeling you will do just fine Jeff. Post pics!

My family and I went up to Vermillion last Thursday through Sunday (we tent camped at McKinley State Park near Tower. Great place!) with some friends and their kids.
I had never fished the lake before so my plan was to go out, catch a few fish for a fish fry and then go play around with the smallmouth after that…….. NOT SO MUCH!
We fished all day the first day and marked fish everywhere to no avail.
Did get on top of a school of fish and dropped a jigging rap on them, ripped it about 3 times and BOOM got hammered. Thought “here we go” then proceeded to not get another bite.
Figured I don’t mind removing a few Y bones so I will just go catch a few pike….. Strike 2.
We ate hotdogs that night.
Next morning made a pretty hefty run to the west end of the lake and again found a lot of fish on some good breaks and fished the heck out of them with spinners and a crawler, jig, jigging rap, even tried pulling cranks on lead core. nothing, nothing and nothing.
We went in at about 3 to figure out if it was going to be chicken or burgers for diner.
In one last ditch effort we went out at about 5 o’clock not far from the park, (near Ely Island) and found a bunch of fish on a break that went from 15ft and rocks to about 21ft and soft bottom.
We tied on a Lindy rig with about an 8ft snell and a leach…..
An hour and a half later we had 2 limits of perfect eaters.
SUCCESS!
The camp was great, the lake was as pretty as they come, weather was good, fishing was tough but pretty rewarding once we got the figured out.
Will definitely going back but may not put as much emphasis on the walleye fishing and maybe spend more time looking for smallies.

Nice limit of keepers today.Keeping it simple,keeping it clean and keeping your finger on the trigger. 4′ mono leader and slip sinker.

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OK FD we just got back from Vermion River Cottages and here is my report:
1st I would highly recomend VRC,-clean, quiet, comfortable, service was great and the price was right. We fished for pike and SMB and did well for both. We fished from the rapids up river to the portage down river and caught a lot of fish but nothing was very big. We also put in at 2 mile creek to access that part of the Vermilion- 2 Mile Creek looks shallow but we were able to get through with my 25hp w/o a problem. We caught larger fish in this area. We found fish in or near deeper water (about 10′) lots of large expanses of shallow stuff that looks good that was not good for SMB, we wasted a lot of time-however the flat at the confluence had some good pike action. Lots of horse flies! Wear long pant and deet bring boots for the launch as it is shallow. Pretty up there, have fun,
Good luck!

Time to compare notes Frydog-how did you do on the river? We tried to save you some fish and horseflies.