Brad called me earlier this spring looking for a guide to take his dad Jim and friend Rich, and Adam Rich’s son. They were staying in the north arm of Rainy Lake. I met them about 7:50 AM. They had fished the day before and had reasonable fishing trolling spinners tipped with Gulp Minnows.
I like to listen to what someone has to say about fishing. I asked where and what kind of structure. Some people make it hard to catch fish others put on there thinking caps. These guys had there thinking caps on. They trolled around marker buoys marking submerged rocks or out rocks out of water. Easy way to find structure and they found and caught fish. Brad likes to cast while fishing for bass, walleye and northern. He had done well fishing 2-4 feet of water on points tossing crank baits.
Jim, Adam and Rich started with spinners. We worked our way around structure saw a school of fish and bang it was walleye on. The fish were on very snaggy structure, we made a few more passes caught more snags and more fish. I decided to drop a jig down tipped with a minnow. Jig lasted about two seconds and fish on.
There was a rock pile visible to the north of us about a hundred yards off of an island. We found a nice table or small flat in twenty feet of water and there were lots of fish on the graph. Drop jig down, set hook and walleye in boat! I put jigs on Jim, Rich, and Adams lines. Literally as fast as we could drop the jig and minnow down the walleyes hit. We stayed on the spot for three hours, caught tons of walleyes, a bunch of jumbo perch and northerns up to ten pounds.
The fellows were going to be here for several more days so we left to fish and check other spots. Same M.O on each spot, find a reef or rock pile, find a ledge or table in 18-22 feet and walleyes were there and catchable. We had a large storm build that came through about 1:00 PM. It drifted east of us, we missed the lightning and rain. The walleyes bit slower after the front went through. About 3:30 PM a huge storm started building in the west. We opted to head in at 4:00 rather than get caught in the storm.
I was able to get back to my boat house right before the storm let loose. Winds in excess of 60 MPH with heavy rain, and lightning moved through in record time. The weather service gave no warnings to the public. We were able to warn our houseboats guests prior to it hitting. Our guests weathered the storm without to much trouble.