rainy lake walleyes

[nightcrawler]

I am going to the north arm next weekend with my two young kids.
can anyone give me any tips?

[Red]

Are you going to east of the brule narrows? I will be in the Blue Berry island area on August 3-5. In the past during this time of year I have done well on the mid-lake reefs. We will be in a black Skeeter will 150 yamaha.

Good luck!

Red

[Mickey]

I just got back from Coppen's Resort(located between Swell & Redgut Bays) and I found the fishing to be tougher than I expected, however, since this was a family vacation I couldn't fish ALL DAY, so my 3 hour trips were mainly to these 2 bays. Surface water temp. was around 80 degrees depending on what time of day, with highs around 90 with NO BREEZE,(I used my electric motor to troll every day the water was like glass) and we had huge thunderstorms brew up every night in fact we lost power 2 nights and the owner had to refill his washed out driveways on 3 different days. I started trolling cranks & bottom bouncers with crawlers & leeches in 40 ft. of water and then worked shallower up onto the top of some of the marked reefs the owner showed me. I fished this way for 3 hours with my son and his best friend and nobody had a hit. I then tried slip bobbers with crawlers,leeches,& minnows and we started to catch a few small eyes but the evening storms started to get a little to close for comfort (lots of lightning) so we headed back to camp. Best depth for action, 18 ft. of water. This scenario repeated itself wherever & whenever we fished, very few fish while trolling although when you caught one you could go back & usually pick up another, although you may have to go back thru an area for an hour. No fish were caught in water over 30 ft. deep and I tried as deep as 80' with the deep diving cranks. The locator would show most fish around the 20-28 ft. range but we caught most of our fish in 8-18' range. I did have some decent action early one morning before the family was awake on a pink fuzzy grub tipped with a leech. I caught 6 walleyes & 1 northern SSLLOOWW trolling one particular hump but I only caught 1 walleye the next 2 days doing the same thing. If I was going to do it again, especially since this was my 1st time on Rainy, I would hire a guide, I believe the fish are there, but there is SO MUCH WATER that with my 25hp. motor I should have had a guide take me to where he knows the fish are instead of trying to find them on my own. I hope this helps & for the record I was the only resort guest who used the fish house to clean my catch. I don't know if everybody else released all there catch or what, but nobody had another fish in the freezer. Best of luck to you I know they are out there I just think the weather was against us.(Great for the kids swimming though) Mickey

[cvkiekhafer]

I just returned from a two week vacation on Rainy and really enjoyed it. This was my fourteenth year up there and would recommend it to anyone. We did catch walleyes and northerns. We fished mainly northerns the first week because of the storms in the area. We did extremely well with many fish in the slot and up to 36" in length. The walleye action was saved until the second week because the rest of the family left. We found walleyes from 15 to 40 feet and caught many in between. I fished in Sand Bay, Swell, Rice and Blue Berry Island. Most were caught on nightcrawlers with bottom bouncers. We limited out and had fish dinner three times during the trip.

Great Experience!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mickey]

What was the weather like this past week up there? The week of July 14-20th was very hot with many evening storms, and even though I caught fish I felt like the walleyes were tough to catch.(Not a lot in the slot, 2-3 per day, but many more between 12-14 inches.) Since this was my 1st trip to Rainy, I would like to know if this was normal or if the weather(and my inexperience) caused the fishing to just be okay not GREAT. Hard to tell at the resort I stayed at because I never saw anybody using the fish-cleaning house and the guests I talked to said the action was slow for them also. Again, not a bad trip, just curious if it could/should be even better, although I'm sure that comes with experience. Thanks for the report!!! Mickey

[Goldpig]

The walleyes are really shallow now in Swell, Redgut ect. You can catch them on jerkbaits, topwaters (Zara Spook), and spinnerbaits. I was up there for the last ten days and was amazed at how many walleyes we caught on smallmouth type baits.