Jim K: Banks Lake - 5/27-30

Fished Banks Lake last half of Memorial day weekend and Tuesday AM.  Based on my own time on the water, and from everyone I talked to including the campground host of Steamboat Rock State Park walleye fishing remains very slow.  I only talked to (or even heard of) anyone that had caught any walleyes.  One other fisherman had only caught two walleyes in three days.

For walleye on morning #1 I started off pitching jigs and casting a variety of crank baits over the scattered weed beds in devil’s punchbowl, fishing everywhere from the edges of the weeds up to where they were about 8’ below the surface.  I continued with similar pattern over and in the weeds of Kruk’s bay.  With the jigs over the weeds I just was ticking the tops of the weeds and also pitched 1/8 oz jigs with plastic letting it fall between the weeds, basically working it through the cover.  Again, I worked various depths from weed tops 6’ below the surface to the edge of the weeds.  Ran to Barker’s Flats… same poor results.

On morning #2 there was a bit of a breeze out of the North so I headed to a North facing shoreline just up from rose bush.  I casted variety of cranks from 15’ to 1’.  I also bottom bounced with spinners & crawlers out to 30’.  I scouted with my electronics out to 35-40’.  All signs of walleye were absent on electronics all weekend.

Thought out the lake I often ran across schools of whitefish as verified with my video camera.  Next time, especially during a slow walleye bite I may drop a small jigging rap down to them and see if I can hook up.

The remainder of my fishing time was spent scouting for “kids fishing”, or fishing with my family.  I had extremely good luck for small mouth bass using Ultra Light Rippin’ Raps in far backs of numerous tiny coves where water level was only a few feet deep.  Most times one could not keep the small ones off, but I managed to catch a 17”, 15” and a 14” SMB while targeting the smaller bass.

Hi-light of the trip was the 13” SMB caught by my son Seth.  It was his first fish to do it all alone… casting, retrieve, setting the hook, reeling it in!