August 12th, 2025
***Fishing Report***
Walleye - Heavy rains accompanied by lots of lightning, over the weekend, has thrown a wrench into the shallow water bite and walleye bite overall. As the dust settles and walleye bite gets going again angling reports are finding walleyes out in deeper water. 15-30ft of water is where anglers are finding walleyes now. Trolling large crankbaits with leadcore has been very consistent over large sand or mud flats. Perch, blue and black/silver have been popular colors here. Trolling not your thing? Anglers have also been catching walleyes with lindy rigs or jigs around main lake points and sunken islands in the same depth range. Anglers have been using leeches, crawlers and larger minnows here. Gold, black/orange and pink have remained popular colors.
Smallmouth - Smallmouth bass also slowed up, especially for the big bass. Topwater bite has cooled off some, but has been improving. Best topwater bite remains early in the mornings along shorelines, large shallow flats and river mouths. If you're a fan of largemouth bass, fishing frogs in thick lily pads and wild rice beds have been phenomenal this last week. This bite is great early in the mornings too, but often continues throughout the day. Once the sun gets up and the topwater bite cools off, anglers have been switching to wacky worms, spinnerbaits, chatterbaits and square bills in order to keep catching fish.
Panfish - Heavy rains also seemed to of knocked panfish out of the super shallow waters and into a little deeper water for now. Sunfish and crappies have both moved out to weedlines now. Red worms and small leeches, fished under a bobber on weedlines and just inside weedbeds has been very effective for sunfish. While crappies have moved to the outside weedlines, the depth they are being caught remains very shallow. Anglers are reporting they are catching the majority of their crappies 1-2ft under the surface with small beetle spins, jig/twisters or thumper jigs. Last hour of light has been by far the best time to catch crappies.
Pike - Pike on the other hand seem to enjoy cloudy rainy days and cooler weather. Lots of quality pike were reported over the weekend by many anglers. Buzzbaits and the new X-Rap Otus have been very effective on quality pike. Deep weedbeds, mouths of shallow bays and river mouths are the areas to focus on for pike.
Stream Trout - Stream trout anglers continue to catch good numbers of trout this last week. Anglers have been simply trolling small brightly colored minnow baits or small trolling spoons to catch trout. Anglers only need to get their baits down to about 10ft and simply troll until they find active trout. Once found, simply keep trolling through the area.
Lake trout - Small handful of lake trout reports came in this last week. Anglers are catching trout 30-50ft down over 50-100ft of water. Large trolling spoons were the most common bait used to catch lakers.
Heavy rains and lighting has stirred up the fish again this last week.