August Waters

A nice 39" released at Central

This week has been a prime example of the typical Canadian weather scenario,  "Wait six hours and the season will change."  That phrase could not be more true the past several days.  The beginning of the week brought us misty, cloudy and still waters only to be followed by blazing hot and wind.   Weather has been hot/humid littered with passing thunderstorms the last three days, hanging around 85-90 degree's in the sun. It is amazing how fast the water temperature's sky rocket after just a few days of sunshine. Water temperatures have blasted up from 64 to about 72 on the surface in just a couple days.

The walleye have responded to the warmer temperatures by sinking to deeper depths. Most guests have been catching walleye's from 12-25 ft. Some of the bigger female's have been caught in the deeper waters 20'+.  Trolling crankbaits such as: White reef runners, Rapala fire tiger Shad Raps, and clown wally divers along 15-20 ft breaks has been effective. Prime example is from the current guests at SW lake. Three gentlemen trolled blue and silver hot N tots for three hours one afternoon,  boating over 75 walleye often with double and triples. If trolling doesn't strike your fancy, my favorite method is vertical jigging while back trolling on the deeper reefs and wind blown shores. A reef or point that has had the wind pounding it for a couple of days will always produce fish.

Pike are scattered between deeper weed beds and wind blown points. Trolling larger cranks like 6" Jakes and Rapala F18 Husky Jerks are a great way to cover ground when casting gets to be a bit tiresome.  Burnt Lake boated a dandy 42" fish just trolling to the south west of the cabin.  During the hot days pike action has been better from 3 to 8 pm, when the sun is off the peak. We have had some tremendous surface bite's when the wind calms down in the evening.  Buzz baits and dancing raiders are always entertaining.  

Rule is...you have to kiss fish #100 of the day. 

MVP lures of the week have been:

For pike: #8 silver bladed/black skirted bucktial, and the smaller 3/4 oz johnson gold minnow has trumped the 1 1/4 oz silver minnow as pike continue to chase smaller baits this summer.  Black and orange 6" jake. 

For walleye, 1/4 oz jig and a pumkinseed or white Gulp tail, orange bladed worm harness and a blue and silver Hot N Tot.

Good luck on the water everyone!

_Nathan 

www.bighookcamps.com