Jim K: Roosevelt - 8/31-9/3
For public:
I spent Labor Day weekend on Lake Roosevelt on a mixed fishing / family camping time together. Walleyes were active very early and late in the days on crankbaits over rocky points. I fished for about two hours two mornings and one evening and ended up with 10 walleye and three smallmouth bass.
For SWC members:
I camped the weekend at Fort Spokane and primarily fished for walleyes on the arm from the campground up past the narrows, but began trying for Sturgeon on the last day of the season on this lake.
I arrived mid-day Friday, then headed up past Hunters to scout the main channel with my electronics for sturgeon before dropping my bait. I failed to find anything promising, so I returned to meet my family at 5:30PM back at the campground. As I Idled through the no wake zone by the Casino a breeze picked up so I stopped to cast against the rocks opposite of the Ft. Spokane ramp where the wind was accentuating the eddy current. I picked up two walleyes (17” & 12”) and one 17” SMB casting cranks while bumping them against the submerged boulders.
The rest of the weekend I only fished the AM light transition times close to the rocks in windswept / current areas… even a small pickup of the breeze at the correct time of day seemed to make the fish more active. When casting cranks on Roosevelt I always treat it as a small river and find ares where current / eddies will dictate where fish will be. When close to the rocks I was using a Rapala Scatter Rap Deep in Purpledescent color that I bounced off the submerged rocks. Including the above fish, I picked up four eyes this way and one 17” SMB.
On Monday AM I got up at 3:30AM to try to see what fishing activity was like before the sun came up. I worked my way upstream from Ft. Spokane hitting a few sloping points near deep water with crankbaits. There was a bright moon high in the sky so I was throwing silver / ghost colored lures with lots of flash to catch the available light like a glass minnow colored husky jerk, silver jointed rapala, glass ghost X rap plus a Tennessee shad husky jerk just to throw something a colored belly on it. I had no luck until 5:30AM when I came to a sloping point casting the X rap up shallow and landed two 18” SMB and one 19” walleye. The walleye spit up two small perch. I made a few more casts shallow with no more hits, then turned around and casted into deeper water (20'-30’) behind me and had a few almost imperceptible bites on each cast with the X-rap. I switched to a Shadow Rap Deep (runs 8-10 feet deep) in Albino Shiner or Ghost color and began pausing it during my retrieve. I selected this lure because I could pause it to attempt to hook my bites, and because it is the exact size & profile of the perch the walleye caught earlier spit out. Over the next 30 minutes until 6:15 AM I had constant action. I only caught 5 more walleyes, all were about 19” long, but during this time I had about 30-35 bites. The strikes were barely a tick feeling, so I was setting the hook and missing quite often. During these 30 minutes between retrieving fish and my slow / pausing retrieve I probably only made about 2 dozen casts. I was having multiple bites on many casts. I needed to let the shadow rap sit quite still very often to have any strikes. I tried ripping the lure with little to no pauses to trigger a more solid bite, but I didn’t get any bites with that retrieve. About 15 minutes into this frenzy I stopped getting bites, so I switched to a Yellow Perch colored shadow rap deep and my action picked up again. At 6:15AM just as the sun barely began to show itself above the distant mountains everything stopped.
I fished for another half an hour with my shadow rap and had no strikes. I then scoped the area with my depth finder to see if I could find where the walleye’s went to. At the very bottom of the point I was fishing the bottom leveled out at 100’. Right at this base of the point were classic walleye looking arches that did not extend out very far from the point. I tried to drop shot and jig them for 15 minutes, but had no luck. I should have dropped my camera and verified that they were walleyes, but I had promised to be back early for some family time & to pick up camp. All in all it was one of my best experiences on Roosevelt ever.