Jim K: Roosevelt - 9/13

I took my Son Seth out the evening of Friday Sept 13 and early AM of Saturday September 14th to Lake Roosevelt. We fished magic hours of dusk and dawn targeting shallower areas with jerk baits. We had an excellent bite on Friday PM, and a much slower bite on Saturday AM. Friday we boxed 8 walleyes and threw back / lost several more plus several smallmouth. Pic is of a nice 20” keeper held by Seth while he braved the dark once we got back to the dock. It was much slower for us on Saturday AM.

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This is one of my favorite patterns. Over the past few years I’ve had about a 50/50 success rate in having an exceptional trip fishing with jerk baits for walleyes during the 45 minutes before sunrise or the 45 minutes after sunset. Add to this the 15 minutes or so after sunrise or before sunset and it has been a truly magic hour for me. I’ve been successful at this during late summer / early fall time frame. (I’ll be experimenting with it during other times of the year soon.) I look for current areas over shallow points or humps with current caused by either a narrowing or point of Lake Roosevelt, or by stronger wind currents. (In Roosevelt standards “Shallow Points” may be over 20-30 feet of water, even though my lures may only be 12 feet deep.) Weeds have’t played a factor, but fishing over rock has. I throw a Shadow Rap Shad Deep in colors Silver or Ghost during the darkest times, and a perch or more natural color during the lighter times. I also use Strike King KVD jerk baits with similar color patterns. When it is really dark I may start / end with a glow in the dark soft plastic bait on a jig pitched and slowly reeled over the bottom until the jerk bait bite takes off / or slows up to add a few more fish to my box.

Friday evening we started casting jerk baits at about 6:30PM with a sunset of 7:15PM. We almost immediately began catching fish, I pulled up a few smallmouth bass up to 3 pounds, but within 15 minutes or so, it was the beginning of the Seth fishing show. He began by catching our first walleye. During the next 30 minutes Seth boxed 7 walleye, threw back three SMB, and lost two more eyes. Three of Seth’s walleye’s were between 20-21”. The rest were all 18”. Between Seth’s fish I managed to keep my lure in the water long enough to catch one 23” eye… our biggest of the evening. Seth continued to throw his jerk bait after it slowed down giving me time to catch a few much smaller eyes on my jerk bait before I switched to a glow swim bait on a jig. I then picked up two smaller walleye before the bite stopped. We fished for about another 30 minutes without another bite before heading back to the dock. For Seth’s equipment I paired a spincast reel obtained from one of the kids fishing events with a 7’ casting rod of appropriate weight and 10 lb monofilament.

Saturday AM we were on the water at 5AM and fished until 7:30AM & only caught two walleye and a half dozen or so SMB. (Sunrise was 6:20AM)