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I am no expert on BOQ, but have spent most of my time at Huff's or Hay Bay. Unless you get out on the breaklines at Thompson or Sherman Points, it's really a game of Battleship on Hay Bay. Meaning, you drill some holes and look for fish. I have personally fished water from the teens all the way out to the middle in 30+ feet of water. I have not found any patterns I can trust. Some people will tell you to just make sure you get away from any groups (one of the local experts who I have fished with, will not fish within a few hundred yards of anyone else, but he likes Big Bay and he can get away from the pack there). If you mark zero fish, make a big move of at least 50 or 100 yards. If you are on a machine, move a 1/4 mile even. There are often people running four wheelers or snow machines back and forth from the ramp at Shermans and you are wise to stay out of the main travel lanes. That all being said, I drill three holes in a triangle about 24-30" apart, stick my transducer in the middle hole away from me and fish two rods in the holes to the sides. I always start with a Jigging rap and a Buckshot Spoon with just minnow heads. If I see smaller marks, I will downsize one of those baits to see if the marks are perch. Most are. There are buster perch out there and they can save a sucky day. However, I have on a few occasions, seen a massive group of marks 2-5' off the bottom and they have turned out to be walleye. Unfortunately, so far, they have always turned out to be small fish. The big ones seem to be either alone or way on the edges of the small fish schools. I am an aggressive fisherman. I swing for the fence all the time, meaning when I don't see fish, I will stroke as much as 3-5' on my lifts (out of the hut). You MUST pause after aggressive jigging. On BOQ, they have not come in for me and hit very often while doing this jigging. I use aggressive jigging to call them. On Lake Erie, completely different, but that's a story for another day. Like others have said, I let the fish then tell me what they want. If they come in hot, I start shaking and raising, or just raising slowly. They want it, they get it. Most of the time, you get the FU fish, who look rise, and then drop back down and disappear with a very low probability that they will hit. It can be crazy frustrating. Of course when I cannot get the fish to go, I try everything, including a wide variety of lures and jigging techniques. Elsewhere I have done well dead-sticking my second rod, but the only thing I have ever caught dead-sticking at BOQ is perch. My buddy that I fish with is the opposite of me. He goes subtle 99% of the time and he only fishes one rod. His subtle is very tiny jigging motions (he puts the rod on his leg and just quivers his leg) and then slow lifts when he sees a mark, with some "nodding" of the bait as he lifts. He out-fishes me 9 out of 10 days. Example, last trip to BOQ, if I caught 4 walleye one day, he would catch 6 or 7. If I caught 7, he would catch 11. However, I generally get the big fish and that holds true everywhere we fish. I also typically fish much larger lures than he does. As for success, I figure that in my trips to BOQ (four days typically), I have two days that are brutal (0-1 walleye and maybe 10-15 perch), one day where I catch just a few walleye, and one day where the bite is good (best day ever I think I caught about 15 walleye). I hope to improve that in the future. As for bigs, BOQ is holding out on me. I have hooked some monsters, but the biggest through the hole is only 8 lbs+. I have caught much bigger elsewhere, but BOQ has a big one waiting for me, I know it. Off course she will go back down the hole. Hope that helps some. I am sure that some of the actual experts could add to this novella and enlighten us both.
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