Leech Lake Opener, Team Walleye

Andy with a Nice Walleye

Because of concerns about the Covid virus, Team walleye decided to move it's 47th annual Minnesota Fishing Opener from the traditional weekend of the second Saturday in May to October 9th at Brindley's Resort on Leech Lake.  It was absolutely beautiful with the surrounding green pines and the yellow aspen trees complimented with the chestnut to red leaves of the oak trees, it was very nice.  Not unlike spring the walleyes tend to return to the shallower haunts that they are in May, however the wind plays a very important role in determining where the walleyes are.  Also the water temperatures are about what they are in a normal May, 50 - 55 degrees F.  Also not unlike the May opener, minnows and trolling crankbaits were the strategy.  Our first issue was to find minnows.  In May spot tail shiners are the preferred minnow species and we will use some fathead minnows, however the fall is not the season for spot tails so we were forced to use golden shiners instead.  These are available as they are grown in commercial minnow ponds and serve the winter market for larger minnows.  As well we were able to get some medium sucker minnows which turned out to work very well.  Having done well on Redtail chubs this summer and fall I decided to get a gallon and split it with my brother Steve.  These minnows are supposed to be work very well but they are expensive, much more than the suckers so we were the only 2 boats using them as we purchased them separately.  Everyone arrived at the resort on Friday, October 9th by 5:00.  Some had come earlier to scout the popular spots and did okay, a great sign.  The weather was supposed to be nice on Saturday with little wind, Sunday was ahead of a cold front and had very strong southerly winds and rough, turning to rain that evening lasting through Monday, with northwesterly winds on Monday, we were hoping that cold front would not effect anything.  It turns out that the nicest day, Saturday was my worst day of catching.  My strategy was to find the mid depth humps off Submarine Island and pull Lindy Rigs or jigs in 14 -16 feet of water.  Heck, we never even marked a fish.  Although disappointing we headed back towards Pine Point to drift across the area which is about 10 feet.  There my friend Jay Johnson managed to get 5 fish bringing our total to 7 walleyes which included zero for me! Back at the cabin the guys were giving me a hard time about possibly winning the DCS (Didn't Catch Sh!t) award, well the tourney was still young.  As stated, Sunday the wind took an abrupt shift 180 degrees and blew with vengeance out of the northwest.  Because the other  6 boats seem to catch something out between Pine Point and Grand Vu Flats we decided to try there.  It was much better with my friend Andy Achman nailing this nice 21 inch walleye.  The walleyes were very good sized and matched up with the Leech Lake limit of 4 under 20 inches or 3 under 20 and 1 over 20.  There were a lot of fish in that 20 - 23 inch range and we definitely kept one apiece. That evening I had Ben and Mason in the boat and we spent a lot of time trolling the east side Ottertail Point, usually a very good spot.  We must have made 4 trolling runs and nothing to show for it.  The moon was not out resulting in the night being very dark.  This time of year 8PM is completely dark and it became difficult to see the shoreline.  Relying on the GPS tracks works good but the kicker motor doesn't respond that quickly making it somewhat challenging.

24 inch Walleye

When fishing Sunday I happened to pull in beautiful fish measuring 24 inches.  We set our own limit at 21 inches as the biggest we would keep to that went back into the lake.  The north wind was cold for sure but the bite was not deterred. All of our 7 boats stayed in the general area and did pretty well.  I ended up with 3 walleyes, at least I was out of the basement!  Because the bite was good on Pine Point we decided to try it again after dinner.  We got a few more but admittedly the bite wasn't very good after 7:00 PM.  We switch around boats and Monday I enjoyed the company of Mike Kimpel and  James.  Quite honestly my boat wasn't on fire so we decided to try the shallows for perch as Leech Lake has a nice perch population. After drifting Pine for a few hours we headed for the Narrows, an area between the main lake, Walker Bay, and Steamboat bay.  Averaging around 4 to 5 feet deep, there are a lot of isolated reed beads and the perch congregate in those areas.  We have seen some 12 inches caught back at the resort so we figured we'd try it.   Because all of the buoys were already removed it was a challenge to find a spot to start.  Picking a reed bed we drifted into it using the Motorguide to anchor us at the edge.  There were perch but the average was only about 5 inches.  We caught a ton of them but only kept 4 in that 9 inch range.  After an hour or so and about 100 small perch we decided to finish the afternoon off back at Pine Point.  At 2 we decided to hang it up as it was important to eat early so we could get out before dark!  Deciding to drive to shop at Reeds, arriving at Walker it was closed.  The guys that had been there on Sunday made no mention of the big sign on the door.....damn!!

Gill Net set on OtterTail Point

Monday night proved to be the most interesting for me.  With Mike and James still with me they both agreed that experimenting might be worth while.  The northwest wind was blowing into Duck Point all day and it seemed a natural for walleyes to be in that area.  Well they weren't.  I really wanted to try trolling again and my guests agreed to try it, maybe 30 minutes earlier in the day.  We headed east to Ottertail Point again as I really marked fish in 12 feet there earlier and maybe they would head to the shoreline to feed.  We started trolling when Mike noticed a laundry detergent bottle floating on the surface.  Well maybe some one was marking something.  Trolling well outside the makeshift buoy my shad rap got hung up.  Getting just above where the bait was stuck, the line finally snapped.  Deciding to try a Rattlin Rouge we kept goin up the shore line when we passed a bleach bottle floating.  This time our normal route took us to the shore side of the buoy and we passed just fine.  Turning around  and staying to the outside there was a third buoy and sure enough, I lost my bait again.  Now we were thinking someone might have secured a rope to the bottom to collect trolling lures but side scan showed nothing.  This time a cheap Sassy Shad, $1.49 went on the end of the line.  Sure enough it also got snagged and lost.  All but frustrated as I have made at least 50 trolling runs along this course and never lost a lure.  Before leaving we went up to one of the jugs and pulled it up, it was making sense now.  Mike found a gill net attached to the buoy line with a 15 pound barbell weight attached to the bottom.  As we pulled more up, there were 4 walleyes caught in the net.  Not sure if anyone was watching us we freed a couple of the walleyes and dropped the mess back down.  I have never experienced that on Leech before yet we had never fished the fall before.  Greg at Brindley's acknowledge that the Indians can and do net the lake in the fall however he was surprise they had gone that far.  As stated we were tempted to retrieve our lost lures but decided that $15 wasn't worth the potential hassle.  At least the mystery was solved!  We cabin ended up being able to keep 84 walleyes, 4 each for 21 guys.  They were the nicest sized walleyes we had caught in as long as I remember.  The total was 170 walleyes caught, probably not our best year however the overall size was excellent. The fishing was good enough to want to go back there in the fall and we'll see if next year we can get a group of guys to go!  As always thanks to Mark Mayerich and his dedication to our group.