Cliff Wagenbach cleaning jumbos and walleyes with Jon Wilson

Lake Vermilion mid July fishing for our guests has been up and down, just like the weather.  Plenty of people marking nice schools of fish on the graph, but feeding behavior has been pretty difficult to predict.  Lake Vermilion guide Cliff Wagenbach spent a day with Jon Wilson and some of his family, and they caught 17 walleyes and a lot of really nice jumbo perch.  While fish are being caught on the main lake structure, from one day to the next one has to be willing to hunt them out.  They have been on the top of the structure one day, then off on the wind blown deep side the next.  The key has been to stay at it and be willing to adapt from one day to the next.

Guests are seeing muskies and the action is slowly beginning to pick up, with 2 over 40″ caught along with a handful of smaller ones.  Follows are up too, so hopefully the aggressive bite is soon to take off.  Northerns are being caught on a wide variety of baits and the smallmouth bass action seems to be the most reliable bite for those who just want to catch fish.

Our guests reported catching the following fish:

Smallmouth Bass:  19″ Dale Graham, 18.5″ Lisa Higdon, 18″ Stan Higdon, Corey Kissick, Lennie Beushausen, Ashley Shaffer.

Northern:  39″ Lennie Beushausen, 34″ Mike Eck

Muskie:  42″ Tony Ranallo, 40″ Dan Hinkes

Walleye:  22″ Tony Ranallo, 21″ Mike Eck, 20.5″ Stan Higdon

Hopefully the dark clouds and nearly constant threatening skies of last week are behind us.  This week’s forecast is calling for much drier conditions.