The late summer fish behavior is beginning to transition to fall behavior here in the Ely area. Anglers reported to us the last couple of days that they were having amazing success catching walleyes up against windswept shores in 3-8 feet of water. These reports came in from White Iron Lake, Vermillion and Shagawa. Most reported best results with paddle-tail soft-plastics on a ¼ OZ jig, stick baits and jerk-baits. Another great option is hair or marabou jigs. They can be fished in a couple of different ways; a cast a burned back retrieve, cast and retrieved with a hop along the bottom or cast with a jerked retrieve. A black marabou jig will imitate a leech quite well; other colors will imitate shiners or rainbows. Give them a try, I really think you will like your results. We even heard from several who used larger beetle spins and caught their limit of walleyes.
Big bass are bag in the shallows again. Small mouth out over rocky flats and large mouth is weed cover. Minnows and night crawlers will always be effective, but actively enticing strikes is going to prove more effective right now. consider using buzz-baits, topwater lures, Ned Rigs or Whacky rigged soft-plastics. Work the soft plastics over the boulders or through the weed-cover to trigger the fish that otherwise might not be willing to go out of their way to take a suspended crawler under a bobber.
Not to be left behind, the pike are coming up to hunt the shallower water too. Because large sucker minnows are very hard to find as of late, use large crank baits such as large Rapala’s, Berkly Flicker Shads, Spoons or Buzz-baits.
Crappies and other panfish are in 3-8 feet of water and actively hitting crappie minnows, night crawlers, Beetle Spins, and marabou jigs. If you’re bobber fishing, of course use the live bait options and suspend your bait about mid-watercolumn. Otherwisetryone of the mentioned artificial tactics. If using the marabou jig, see the previously described tactics in the walleye paragraph, the same will apply here.
The lake trout are the exception, they have yet to come up shallow, but I would imaging in the next week or two they will begin migrating shallower before the season ends at the end of September. The usual lake trout tactics are still in play, large tube jigs, bucktail jigs, Dr. Spoons, Large Salmos, Reef Runners, Berkly Flicker Shads and Rapala’s are going to work very well.
