June 21st to 26th Lakes Oahe/Sharpe, Pierre SD Fishing Report

[fishinghutch]

I guided Carl Herreman and his friend Craig Farrell from the Omaha area to possession limits of walleye and smallmouth bass keeping around a 17 inch average size fish along with some bigger walleye to 24 inches. We probably caught around 50 fish a day or more to end up with that average. I then worked for the Outpost Lodge guiding a group of 5 for two days and catching their possession limits of walleye some bass and some northern pike. The bite is still very good on Oahe and we caught all of these fish using bttm bouncer/ minnows, crawlers or leeches and gulp worms in any where from 10 fow out to 35 fow. Some times some of the better fish have been deeper so you have to look around if you are just catching a lot of smaller fish. We put spinners/crawlers down in around 10 fow and worked the bays catching big northern and some bigger walleye. There is a lot of boat traffic around as the lake is very busy so I try to look for areas that haven't been fished and I think that is one of the keys to producing a little better average size catch. It pays to keep moving further out from the main boat ramps until you run out of other boats weather permiting. Lake Sharpe is still good from Pierre down to West Bend but you have to work through numbers of fish there also to get good keepers. I haven't heard much about the Salmon fishing but think it is still slow with not many numbers around.

Hutch