Rathbun 9/22-9/23

Our walleye club hosted a walleye tournament here this weekend. Temps in the upper 80’s low 90’s and bluebird skies. Water levels were about 7′ over normal. 30 anglers fished the tournament with only 5 legal eyes caught on Sunday. 4 eyes around 16″ and one that took the tournament at 24.5″ that weighed 4.24 pounds. If you didn’t catch one in the first hour after the clouds disappeared you were done for the day. I was able to catch only a 12.5″ pitching plastics in 4′ of water. Later we trolled leadcore in 20-35′ of water picking up stripers consistently. We also dragged lindy rigs with crawlers and minnows picking up catfish and stripers. The 332c marked fish all day but the results were no keeper eyes. The DNR had said that the walleye bite has been pretty slow all year. We did have a group pull in a 35 plus pound cat near us. The DNR said it was the biggest he’d seen coming out of the lake, and then gave the guy a ticket for not having his license on him. (He’d left it in the vehicle) Nice lake and good food at the Dogg House.

all in all sounds like a good time. heard of a few more walleyes being caught lately but also heard of a tough fishing year for Rathbun.

thanks for the post. i went to rathbun on sunday morning and had about the same luck. caught two stripers in about 4 hours time. saw lots of fish stacked on the graph but none were biting. should have gone to the river (pool 14), oh well. beautiful day on the water anyway.

Glad to know that I wasn’t the only one that had a tough go of things. Went down Saturday late afternoon and evening with only a couple White’s to show for it. I also was marking nice fish all over. I fished about 30-45 minutes after dark and couldn’t believe the amount of baitfish that were jumping all over the surface…..thought that I might be getting into something but wasn’t the case. Heading to Mille Lacs next Thursday and hoping for MUCH better luck!

-Mark Krakau

Mark- let me know how Mille Lacs goes. I’d like to try that sometime. Good Luck!

No problem, Doug! Keep an eye on the Mille Lacs forum – they catch some huge fish in the fall up there….just hope I’m able to as well!

I usually read all the forums about walleyes, I drool over the mille lacs and pool 4 reports.