During the week of March 23rd through the 28th, I had the opportunity to head north to Lake Winnipeg to target some Big Walleyes. This was not one of the more difficult decisions I have made to say the least.
We stayed on the East side of the lake and that is the side that we concentrated on. Monday was fairly slow for us, landing about 14 fish with most of them being eater fish. We did however; have quite a few fish coming in to look at our baits but we couldn’t convince them to hit. Tuesday ended up being a little better day after some fine tuning. We were using live targets on monday and alothough we didn’t have trouble calling the fish in, for the most part they wouldn’t commit to the fairly large baits. Switching to the forage minnow on tuesday helped us quite a bit. We landed 32 fish on Tuesday with the largest being a healthy 27 incher.
Wednesday ended up being a day I will never forget. My partner called in a hog with his live target. He was working her for quite awhile before I switched my lure to a rattling flyer spoon tipped with a half of a glow white ringworm, which happens to be a great bait for me near home when the walleyes aren’t slamming baits. I convinced her to bite and she ended up being 32 inches and weighed in at 12lbs 8ozs. What a fish to say the least.
Thursday we caught 27 fish over 24 inches and the most surprising thing about it was the weather. Thursday was the most wind we had the entire time we were there but it sure did turn the fish on for us.
Overall it was a great trip and lots of memories were made. It was a great end to a great ice fishing season for me near duluth. I will look forward to heading to Lake Winnipeg in the future.
