Varying Depths Producing Fish Right Now!
Weed Growth In High Gear!
With accelerated weed growth as the water temperature starts to rise a little bit, depths start to push out a little deeper in those back bays where we are concentrating our pitching searches. We’ve seen some massive grass growth in depths under 5-feet and that pushes boat positioning into 7-8 feet in order to hit the weed edge in 4.5 to 5 feet.
Pitch too deep and your lure gets fouled up, too far out and we aren’t hitting close enough to the edge in order to draw the appropriate attention. Needless to say, locating that weed edge is vital.
With that being said, those back bays and the shallows are by no means the only way to catch Walleyes right now. There are fish, and quality fish, being caught out in 12-15 and even 20 feet of water on structure. Sometimes we get caught up on low water temperatures forcing the bite shallow and that is not always the ‘golden rule’.
Slowing it down as you go deeper is necessary, but quality Walleyes can be caught in much deeper water.
We are going to continue to hit the shallows, however. These shallower fish caught pitching seem to be of better overall quality. Even using slip bobbers in these shallow will produce fish but the bobber fish, on average, are going to be the 13-16 variety, while the crankbait fish (as a rule) are going to be your bigger 16-23 inch variety.
I know big Walleyes are caught shallow with bobbers and that many tournaments have been won that way, but overall pitching will land you bigger fish.
Find the windblown shoreline of whatever bay you choose, put the bow mount down and cruise in shallow until you locate the weed edge. Note the depth where you start to pick up weeds on the Lowrance, move the boat our until that weed edge depth is just reachable by your cast and pitch that wind blown edge.
You can use that same information to position your bobbers when the pitch bite slows down a little bit.
Lures Of Choice!
Today, these two crank baits were the hot item. Bleak in #7 Scatter Rap and the #5 Caribbean Shad (Blue Parrot to our regular readers). Bleak has always been a hot Devils Lake color and remains so again this Spring.
Blue Parrot is one of our all-time favorites and today it proved why!
A fishing report, at this time on Devils Lake, would be remiss if we didn’t again mention the slip bobber and how effective it can be in landing fish when the water remains quite cold for this time of the year.
Overall there are fish being caught throughout the fishery and while it isn’t a ‘sure thing’, in certain areas the bite remains pretty impressive. Warmer water is going to be found further west and, while the Eastern portion is cooler, there are still fish (some REALLY BIG Fish) coming out of the Eastern portion of the fishery.
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Good Luck out there!
