Rainy Lake Update

[Tom Anderson]

Just spent a week at The Fisheries resort on Rainy, 35 miles or so north of International Falls. First time there but the other guys have been going for years. We fished the banks a lot to start, although I cast diving plugs in 12-15 fow trying to get walleyes while they focused on SM bass and pike. Got a few walleyes that way but only a few after all day casting.

Then we switched to fishing humps and rock bars with minnows and really started catching walleye. One morning my partner and I got 40 walleye on a couple humps in 12-25 feet of water. Most were 14-18 inches but also a 23 and 20 incher. That was at the end of the week; had we started fishing open water structure earlier we would have caught a lot more fish. Plus we lost some big northerns that grabbed small walleye as we brought them in from that deeper water.

My impression is that if you fish deeper rock structure, especially with minnows (I used a red hook with faceted red bead per Greg Bohn's suggestion) you will catch fish.

[mvwalleye]

Inexperience much of the same in red gut bay. Slow death worked great.