Yesterday we had the annual CLOSA fall walleye event. 5 boats in 11 anglers and between 20 and 22 rods in use. Most of us fished east of Glenora. The Grand Slam ran to the gap to set up and the picture looked a little bleak. Not as good as other years at this time. I had Fred (Fred Fisher) and Tim (Tylercurt) aboard for this event. Great guys to fish with.
Surface water temps on the Fish Hawk was 59.7 F at the Gap and as low as 57.2 in the Glenora area. We started with 5 braid and mono rigs and one, a 2 colour core off the boards.
With nothing being produced in the Gap area we trolled to an area I like on the north side half way between the Gap and the Prinyers in 100 fow. We had a great picture there and worked that area for a couple hours. Tim had a hard hit but it didn't stick. That was one of only 2 areas that we marked fish in the 20 to 30 foot depths that I would consider active walleye.
We pulled lines and ran to Keith's Shoal where 3 of the other 4 boats had been concentrating most of the morning. The wind picked up and it was difficult to get the trolling angles that I wanted. We made a couple passes and then trolled on to Glenora on the south shore. I swithed out to 5 colour cores on both my riggs because most of the morning we marked fish continuously below the 40' range. About 1:10 Fred and I noticed his outside board was acting weird but we had some problem with weeds on the boards all morning. When we got that board to the boat there was a couple pounds of weeds on the board and a 21" walleye on the Barbie Reef Runner. Fred won the derby with the single walleye of the day. The other place that we marked walleye in the 20 to 30' range was about a mile east of Glenora.
I really think that because of the high core temperature in Lake O the big girls haven't started the transition in form the lake. We are going to give the boat a rest until mid November, after the bear, moose and deer hunts are over. Hopefully the Bay temps will be down in the mid to high 40's by then.
I didn't take many pics but I think Fred did some videos and Tim took some pics.
I did get this pic of presenting Richard with a set of grippers at the bar-b-que because apparently he wasn't very good with a net saturday morning. From what a hear is that Richard was able to extract the hooks out of a 10 pound eye with the net with out causing any injury to the fish.
It was a clean release. Later
Al
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Captain - Team ATOMMIK/Rockets