2012 Season Recap

Very hot summer with warm water and stable weather leads to surprisingly steady action all summer.

Last summer the weather turned hot in late June and stayed hot all through July. The Walleye fishing was surpisingly good all through the summer. Night fishing was key for me and the live bait bite was consistant. I was using a combination of Leeches and Night Crawlers on Jigs, Lindy Rigs or Slip Bobbers, all produced and the Walleyes were in the 18-21 inch range for the most part. The fishing was surprisingly consistant all summer given the hot weather. But the Full Moon in early August proved to be special.

It started with my son Mike boating the 42 1/2 inch Muskie pictured below. His biggest so far caught three days before Full Moon on a Bulldawg. The fish hit over deep water, just off of a rock bar, one of our favorite late summer spots. There were scattered storms in the area, a perfect night to fish. Mike has caught the last 3 Muskie when he Matt & I fish together. I have become "The Net Man"

David & Alex Stava arrived for the Full Moon period August 1st. We planed to only night fish and fish late. The first night the weather was perfect. There was a good southwest wind and on and off showers. We fished hard and blew through all our bait by midnight! We caught 40+ Smallmouth and Walleye! The fish wanted nightcrawlers and not leaches.

The second night we boated five Walleyes in the first 10 minutes of fishing. The wind was blowing and the fish were on from the start. David made sure we had enough bait. But we still blew through 10 dozen crawlers and caught 50+ fish! The largest was caught at 12:38 am (time stamp on photo) David's 22 inch Smallmouth was a monster! He released after photo. It was the largest but we caught several huge bass and lots of nice Walleyes. We kept a 9 fish limit of Walleyes, all the Bass were released. We fished until 2:30 am.

The last night a cold front came in and we struggled to catch 20 fish. Still not terrible. All in all we had over 100 fish in three nights of fishing. One of the best night bites in years.

The whole summer was consistant with both bass and Walleye but this was an exceptional week. The perfect storm of season, weather & moon phase, the late summer peak came early.