Thinking about going tomorrow, Wednesday. I was wondering if the water has cleaned up any and where the fish have been. My method of choice is bottom bouncing with harnesses. Any info would be of help.

Thanks...

Paper Boy,

I plan on being out tomorrow also. Last attempt was last week Thursday. Baaaaad day. Fish are scarce west of the channel. Sure is different than a few weeks ago and last year at this time.

I'm going to start near MacDonalds. Lets get together on the radio.

Around West Sister the fishing is really slow too. The Mayfly hatch is in full swing. Some people claim they are getting walleyes casting Mayfly rigs (Weapons, Flippin Harnesses, etc) and using a five count or less before retrieving. I haven't ever done this myself, though. I'm trying to figure out a good way to fish something small and shallow when trolling. Maybe a small Rapala off a planer board with 20 feet of line will work.

Frank, Just troll one of your 3/4 ounce mayfly rigs 15-30 feet behind your board at 1 1/2 MPH with a very small piece of worm. Have fun!

Doesn't the boat scare the walleyes off to the sides when they are that high up? That's why I thought I'd need to use planer boards.

LAST EDITED ON Jun-13-01 AT 04:01AM (CST)[p]Yes you'll need the planers. My girlfriend and I used this method last Friday and Sat. and caught between 60-80 eyes and a multitude of white bass. Most of them in the 14-16" range and a few larger. The outside boards caught most fish but the inside ones were active also. You can shorten that length behind the board even more sometimes. Last summer we caught fish trolling with weight forwards as little as 10' back.

Was out last Friday (23) and Saturday (17). We missed counted our limit both days by 1. Caught ours using harnesses also. Clean water is not far out from Bolles, maybe 5 - 6 miles out. But most people are out past the ditch 12+ miles. We fished between Middle Sister and West Sister. Fish were really scattered as with all boats with tons of whites and sheaphead to be found.

We fished from top to bottom. Bigger but fewer came deeper. We saw on two occasions, one was a walleye and the other ?? slurping mayfly's off the top of surface! We had an assortment of colors out and ended switching completely over to hammered gold (the mayfly thing I guess). If you have any weapons (small blades, not many beads) I would use that with a small piece of worm.

Hey Frank, what's a mayfly rig? Thanks!

Could not raise the Paper Boy on the radio today - so had to do it all by myself. Flat calm this morning with the wind picking up and coming from the SE about 11:00am.

Finally found a group of walleye about one mile straight north of MacDonalds. (West of the channel) I kept my stern on MacDonalds and my bow on Fermi trolling north at about 2.6 MPH.

I was cathing them on silver Scorpion spoons about 15 - 18 feet deep in 23 - 24 ft. of water. Caught a total of seven eyes.

There are some mighty big sheepshead out there also.

The water surface is littered with mayflies. The east wind was pushing them to the shore. Better to fish further east and stay out of the flies floating on the surface. They were thick enough to collect on the lines and foul the action of the crankbaits.

A Mayfly rig is a rig with a small hook, a small spinner, a few beads and a weight. Two of the most popular are The Weapon and The Flippin Harness. Alot of people tie their own variations of these. You use about 1/2" to an inch long piece of night crawler with them. They are supposed to imitate an emerging Mayfly.

Mind if I ask where you got them at? I plan on getting out Friday or Saturday or both. Most of the reports I've heard are for east of West Sister but I see Bob Z got some west of the channel. Coming from Anchor Point, its alot closer if I can find fish to the west but I'll run to the east if I have to.

Frank, We used a couple of gold flippin harnesses and a couple others that I picked up at Sportmans Outpost in Vermilion from Den, I cut the back hook off the flippin harnesses and only used the back hook on the others. A friend of mine told me tonight that he fished for 6 hours today (3 people) and only caught 9 fish in the same general area I was in last weekend and most of them came on small spoons, so that shows the fish either shut down or moved or wanted something different. It was dead calm and they couldn't get anything going. Good luck this weekend!