Sunday, August 20, 2017

Walleye for Dinner

Fishing Time:  7:30 to 2:00 PM
Weather: Sunny, slight breeze, T-80s
Moon Phase: 68% Moon
Location:  Starvation Reservoir
Water Temp: 69 Degrees
Best Bait: Spinner rig and drifting jig with worm near bottom
Who Went: Bobber John, Dunc
Bobber John and I made a trip up to Starvation Reservoir to see if we could put a few walleyes in my boat.  It’s never an easy task to catch walleye, but if any lake can produce some walleye it's Starvation.  We arrive a little later than we wanted at 7:30, but the wind was calm and the weather was beautiful.
We started in Saleratus Bay running spinner rigs near bottom in 15-25 ft of water.  We didn’t see many fish on the fish finder and within a half hour we decided to move.
  
We fished a rocky bay across from the boat ramp and it produced a few smallies, but nothing big.  After fishing the bay, we moved again over to Rabbit Gulch and put the spinner rigs down around 20-30 ft and started dragging.
After about 20 minutes and a few possible light bites, I saw my rod double over and I did my best to give it the walleye sweep.  It worked out and I had the first walleye of the day on the end of my line.  It was a nice walleye and got us excited to work the same area over again. 
We continued with spinner rigs and felt like we missed a few bites, so we switched techniques to drifting a jig tipped with a worm through the same area trying to keep it right near the bottom.  It worked out well and we put another 8 or so walleye in the boat.  They were small, but they were still walleye, and we were excited to have something to fillet. 
Our three dozen worms went quick with the walleye and smallies biting often.  We headed to the fish cleaning station and did the best we could to fillet the little cigar walleye and one big one.  Bobber John took all the meat from the small walleye and one smallie we kept while I took the fillets from the big walleye.  It made for a yummy Sunday dinner paired with some steamed veggies!