Lake Oahe Crankbaits [Archive] - Walleye Message Central

eye guy

01-19-2002, 02:46 PM

thats a good question.... with Oahe undergoing the changes it has in past few years its any cranks game... I didn't get into a really good crankbait bite on Oahe this year... When I did troll it seemed wally divers, and reef runners outproduced shad raps and others.... A buddy of mine managed to outfish me a few times,,, he was using frenzies... any questions,, let me know.

Ristorapper

01-19-2002, 06:23 PM

Sounds to me like the jointed shad raps were a pretty good bet during the PWT championship last September. Seelhoff pulled in a limit in :20 on one of the days, the day he headed out late and got up on a sandbar before he got a mile from the launch!!

I just finished looking at them in the Bass Pro catalog and there aren't many colors available but with the high quantity of young of the year white bass I would definately go with a color that is similar to that bait fish.

I myself was using a #5 or #7 deep diving shad in white color or a pearl storm similar the the shad rap. The new white shad rap was running in that $7-8 range though and the storm was around $4-5 however. Both of course resemble the plentiful bait fish now in the system that the walleye are feasting on. I have never seen so many urpped-up white bass in my livewell when I got home on many trips. And many walleye were so full of them they poohed silver when you squeeze them to un hook them as one of my buddies said. So I would find and use any of those crankbaits that simulate white bass and give em a try.

Don't forget however that there still are some smelt in the area and from what I have seen they are having somewhat of a comeback as I saw a streak of them this spring about 20 feet long(the string of them not the individual smelt :)) moving along the top of the water near a boat dock just south of Bismarck.

I just so happened to catch fish shallow all fall and never got in water much deeper than 11 feet, thus the success of the #5 or 7.

BW(ND)