Early Summer 'Eyes

I decided to head out and chase some walleye on Monday night on Shebandowan Lake, about an hour West of Thunder Bay. We've been dealing with some major winds across northwestern Ontario the last few days so I was happy to be fishing out of my big tiller that allows me to maintain solid boat control even in the windiest conditions. We pulled into the ramp at around 5pm and the wind was still howling so I decided to start looking for active fish on windswept shorelines and weed beds by tossing a variety of rattle baits (lipless crank baits) We instantly started to hook up with fish using this technique. The fish were all coming off of rocky shorelines with some vegetation in about 8-12ft of water. We rarely got bit if the shoreline didn't have some vegetation. Rattle baits are sleeper walleye lures and are a fantastic option to toss for walleye when the wind is blowing hard as you can make long casts and cover water quickly with them. A few personal favourites include the new Berkley WarPig and the Rippin' Rap. The bonus of fishing artificial baits for walleye is you tend to get a bunch of incidental bonus smallmouth which adds some excitement! The wind finally started to back off around 8:30pm and our rattle bait backed off around the same time so we worked some shallow rock piles and pencil reeds with a variety of jigs and rigs. My fishing partner cracked a few fish on a classic jig and leech combo while I had some luck pulling a Berkley Flicker Rig Spinner harness behind a Northland Rock Runner Bottom bouncer and a little floating jig head tipped with a leech and a short lead of 10lb Trilene XL behind a Northland Rock Runner Slip Bouncer. We have long days in June and July in Northwestern Ontario and we still had full sunlight at 10pm which is pretty sweet and conducive to sneaking out after work for a good fishing trip. Summer is short so don't just wait for the weekends or your vacation hit the water!