Rainy Lake Houseboats

I left Duluth at 6:00 AM. I was on my way up the lake by 9:30. I met James and his friends at their Lady of the Lake houseboat at the Brule Narrows Central mooring site. We had a pretty steady rain going and opted to just fish and not film.  We decided to cast plastics, stick baits, and crank baits.  There were walleyes and pike up to five pounds were using the points with the wind blowing into them.

James ran into similar fish using a #7 perch Shad Rap along with a smattering of smallmouth around rocks and cabbage.  I decided to look for walleyes on rock piles or reefs. I fished with Bob and we came on a reef that had a pretty large school of walleyes in twenty two feet of water. We put on jigs and tipped them with golden shiner minnows. The wally’s loved the tasty minnows. We caught them pretty quickly and I had to give Bob the bad news, we can’t pound on these, we might be able to fish them tomorrow while we are filming. The past few days walleyes would be on a reef catch a few and they would disappear. We looked at several more reefs and most had fish in the same depths 22-23-feet. We will find out if they will bite in the morning.

Saturday morning looked to be spectacular weather wise. I stopped to hook up with James and his camera man Ben. We left the houseboat at 8:15 AM in James’ Skeeter and headed to the area where the walleyes were the afternoon before. We looked at yesterdays way point, it was devoid of walleyes. We moved to east side of reef 51 feet from the original waypoint, walleyes were stacked. We moved above the walleyes and set the stop lock on the I Pilot Minnkota trolling motor. We were both fishing B2 Fishing Tackle jigs (check out the small wire barb that really hold the crawler in place), James tipping with a piece of crawler, my self with a shiner. These walleyes were hungry. We stayed on the school until 11:30 AM. A pike had followed up a walleye (visible on the Humming bird 1197 not to the eye). It caused the walleyes still bit but cautiously.  We caught some very nice size eyes and perfect keepers.

It was apparent all morning long that crawlers were catching larger walleyes. A crawler on a jig might be the best live bait presentation day in and day out.  Thread the crawler on to the hook and leave about 1-2″ trailing off the hook. We would cast the jigs back across the school and pull the jigs along the bottom with a slight lift of the jig. You will see  the technique this winter on InDepth Outdoors. We caught about forty walleyes, keeping a nice batch for a fish fry.

The Humming Bird 1197 is an unbelievable tool for fishing. See the school, mark them with a way point, move the boat over the way point and move past twenty feet and hit the stop lock or anchor button. The Hummingbird will tell you how far you are from the school of fish or waypoint.  20 feet past works pretty well. Cast past the school, pull jig through, set hook when you feel the strike and repeat!

I headed back to Rainy Lake Houseboats about 2:30 PM. James, Bob, Ben and the gals are spending more time on the houseboat, fishing swimming and kayaking, before a great dinner on beautiful Rainy Lake!