Since Labor Day, and the start of my customer’s more intense pursuit of walleyes, I’ve spent several days on Lake Winnie. The past couple of them have been with Scott and Owen Stemple, who were staying at Bowen Lodge. Scott Stemple won a recent Benchmade sweepstakes entry and the prize package included an all expense paid trip to Bowens, and two days of walleye fishing with yours truly, the Early Bird Fishing Guide.
Owen and Scott Stemple, Benchmade Sweepstakes Winners
Having a couple of days to fish with the same crew is nice for me, it allows extra time to experiment with locations and presentations. It allows more time too, for talking with folks around the resort, comparing notes about who’s doing what, and where. On these particular fishing trips, I also had a chance to learn how Winnie’s walleyes reacted to completely opposite weather conditions.
One thing I’ve learned this week is that it would be easy, after a few hours of casual fishing, to conclude that the walleyes on Winnibigoshish are not biting. Unless you were to get stubborn, like I sometimes do, and keep covering the water until you find fish. If you did that, then you would figure out that the complete opposite is true; they actually are biting quite well.
What I believe is that there is so much food available, and good fish habitat is so widespread, walleyes are already happy wherever they are. Nature has given them no reason to begin migrating away from summer haunts toward fall feeding areas. The result is that we’re finding small numbers of fish everywhere, but no large schools of them anywhere. So, for me, the trick to success has been to try lots of spots, then when we hit a good one and have a successful drift, or trolling pass, I take the win and move along to another spot. The more spots we try, the better we wind up at the end of the day.
Owen Stemple with nice fat Lake Winnie Northern Pike
Saturday was an ideal day for fishing on Winnie, the skies were grey, there was a chop on the surface and fish were in an active mood. We started fishing on the north shore, trolling spinners along the weedline. The dark sky made the northern pike active; we caught lots of them in various places along the stretch of water between the gap and Stony point. The pike were fun, and there were some walleyes, but they were few and far between, so we moved further west. At every stop, there were a few fish and most of the time, species were mixed. Walleyes, pike and perch co-mingled in the shallows; 6 to 8 feet of water was where we did our best work.
Also at every stop, we observed something that I think has been true for a month or more on Winnie; the fish were active for the first trolling pass, but rarely were there enough to produce good results on the second trolling pass. I noticed that almost every time I saw a fish on the screen of my graph, somebody caught it. That was true at every stop throughout the day, but like I said, weather conditions were ideal that day. I notice too that whenever we attempted to re-run a stretch of productive territory, sightings on my graph dropped exponentially. I think whatever fish were there bit the first time they saw our lures, so going back for more was usually time wasted.
Scott Stemple with nice Winnie Walleye
For a time on Saturday, we experimented with jigs and minnows in deeper water. Fishing on mid-lake structure in 16 to 20 feet of water, we did find some walleyes. Like the fish we discovered in shallow water, one pass was all we could get. For me, jigging was rewarding because if offered a change of pace and was more productive for walleyes. For my crew, it lacked the fast pace of catching the mixed bag on the shoreline, so we returned to the weed edges to finish off the day.
Sunday’s weather conditions were more challenging, and during the morning, Winnie was stingy. There was a strong west wind blowing, and that forced us to drive to Richard’s Townsite to launch the boat. That got us out of the wind, but with clear blue skies and no chop on the water, the activity level was low. Fishing the stretch of water between that landing and the Mississippi River mouth produced some perch, but not much else. There were places that I saw larger marks on my graph, but unlike our experience on Saturday, seeing fish did not mean that we cold catch them.
Scott and Owen Stemple, Benchmade Sweepstakes Winners
Part of the problem on Sunday was my own fault, I knew that my crew preferred trolling the spinners, so I stuck with it longer than I should have. Around noon, it was clear that if we were going to catch fish, we’d need to try something else. At about that same time, the winds subsided, and travelling around the lake became a lot easier. “I know it’s not your first choice boys, but I think we’re going to have to try the jigs and minnows again,” I said. They agreed, and we headed back to the middle of the lake to try our luck.
Numerous walleyes from Lake Winnie’s 2018 year class have entered the protected slot
Like Saturday, there were fish on the bars, this time in water depths of 18 to 22 feet. They were still scattered, and we still had to follow the one pass and move spots rule, but at least now we were catching some walleyes. We were able to fsih effective using ¼ ounce Live Bait Jigs tipped with small to medium golden shiners. I won’t try to tell you that it was a “hot bite”, but we did manage to have some action and catch a half dozen “keeper” size fish in the 16 to 17 inch range, class of 2019 fish I think.
There was also a half dozen fish in the protected slot, all from the 2018-year class and all just barely over 18 inches. That’s been happening to me a lot lately, and you can see by the accompanying photo that taking a quick and casual measurement could lead to trouble. I’d recommend taking plenty of time to measure extra carefully and be sure that your fish is legal before dropping it in the cooler.
A hopeful sign, lots of 8 t0 10 inch walleyes might mean a strong 2023 year class coming up
Another observation is that 2023 appears to have been a good year for walleye spawning. This week we’ve caught dozens of walleyes in the 8-to-10-inch size range. If these fish have good survival next winter, we should have something to look forward to after the 2019-year class population declines.
Secchi Disk reading on Lake Winnie 8 feet as of 9-8-2024
One more thing, I’ve added a tool to my arsenal, an official Cub Reporter, Staff Number 003, Secchi Disk. Now, instead of speculating about the water clarity on any given body of water, I can test it myself. Before we ledt the lake on Sunday, we dropped in into Lake Winnie and learned that the current water clarity is at about 8 feet. In future reports, I plan to offer this information regularly, so stay tuned.
I’m thankful for the Benchmade company’s confidence in allowing me to handle the fishing end of their sweepstakes winners’ trip to Lake Winnie. I’m thankful too for the folks at Bowen Lodge, they’ve given me lots of support over the years, and it too is much appreciated. Finally, I’m thankful that Scott and Owen got in on some decent fishing. After spending two days in the boat with them, I can tell that these guys are like me, working class folks who probably would not have made this trip on their own. It’s gratifying to see somebody win something knowing that it truly is a “special treat” for them. Thanks everybody for a great experience!