June 11th ,12th,13th

looking for some info on Rathbun walleyes for this weekend. I’ve got couple Rookies coming from Omaha, Neb. this weekend and would like to show them a good time. Had heard that the eyes were doing well a week and a half ago. aswell as the crappies. Any crappie info would be great also. Tried to get them to get a Minn. lis. so we could fish pool 4 but that did work out. Tyhanks 4 the info. Walleye Iowa

the good news is i fished rathbun on friday last and caught several nice crappie next to shore in flooded grass/willows. saw several others catching some fish doing the same thing. check the crappiethon website for the report from rathbun from last weekend. the bad news is, i went out last night(mon.) from 5-8:30pm and tried the same pattern and caught one crappie. i don’t know what to tell ya? it could be it is a morning bite.
the word i have been hearing on walleyes is that they are very shallow(1′-4′), especially if the wind is blowing. i have never had good luck walleye fishing in rathbun. there was a grand national walleye tourney there may 23rd and something like 29 boats weighed their limit of six fish and another five or six boats weighed five fish. only three boats out of 42 zeroed out on fish. so they are out there to be caught. well good luck to you and let us know how you did.

thanks for the info

Hey Walleye,

I fished Rathbun last Fri.,Sat., and Sun. It seems fishing got progressively worse as the days went on. We caught a few walleye off of Ranger Point in shallow but I think the best action was off of the Island view point South of the Lake. I would try there first. We mainly fished for crappies and did the best along the dam. Fish moved out deeper each day. We caught tons of 8-9″ fish shallow but the nicer fish (10-13″)were out in 15-20ft of water. minnows with slip bobbers definitely were the rule out deep. Marked all kinds of fish 2-3ft off the bottom out deep. They had a crappie tournament on Sat. and the semi-pro winner weighed 10 fish limit of around 9lbs. The amatuer weight was around 10lbs., So the big fish are definiely out there. I guess COE are letting the lake drop so that could be why the fishing wasn’t as good. Hope this helps ya. Good luck to you and let us know how you did!

Thanks Dan

I fished Rathbun Tues & Wed 6/8, 6/9 and found it very slow,crappies were not by shore and not very co-operative.
The local experts said the fishing has pretty much shut down
because the corp has increased the outflow and thus dropping lake level and that until they stop the flow out
fishing will be poor. Not sure why they are dropping it
during the crappie spawn this will cause lot of lost spawn.

Well guys I’m back from a weekend at Rathbun. I thank you all for the info. here is how the trip went. 1 1/2 days fishing 3 walleyes 18 to 20 inchers. The walleye we caught were shallow 4 feet deep. Would of done better on the eyes but we did get shallow till this morning. We also caught apox.50 crappies trolling 25 of them keepers.and about 15 strippers. The crappie I cleaned had not spawned yet. and they were not full of eggs. I would say about half full.
I don’t know if the colder wheather before had them late then the water dropping still held them up? I heard a few weeks ago they were shallow. Best color when the sun was out was glory green 1/4 walleye driver and the clouds showed up #5 red jointed shad rap. Well thanks again for the info

Thanks for the report. Planning to head over next weekend.