We fished Banks for the first time from 6/2 through 6/6. We had a great time but fishing was slower than we were hoping for. I gave it a 3 because we did catch some nice walleye our first time targeting them and the lake is a beautiful location for sure.

I cant really say the fishing was slow because we caught a mess of sm bass dinks and about a gazillion small walleye! We couldn't keep the baby walleyes off our gear! Anything from 6" to 13" small ones but mostly in the 8" to 10" range.

It didnt matter where we were fishing or what time or what depth or what we put in the water or how we fished - those little walleyes went for it! If even half of them grow up, Banks will be the walleye capitol of the world in a few years!

Camped at Steamboat and fished the punch bowl late Monday after setting up camp. Caught our first ever walleye - an 18" keeper - within minutes of getting gear in the water, then a whole bunch of dink walleye.

Two of the three keeper walleye we ended up with were caught on bottom bouncers with slow death worm rigs behind chartreuse smile blades tiped with night crawlers. The third one was on a small chartreuse lead head jig tipped with a crawler. Chartreuse seemed the best color for the smile blades and for the jigs and plugs we tried but everything caught the babies.

As I said, it was a slow week for keepers. We ended up with three keeper walleye for the week and 4 nice sm bass from 2.2 to 3.5 pounds. The best bass and two of the keepers came from the back side of Steamboat rock very close to shore. All the keeper walleye were caught in less than 20 ft of water. All the bass were caught very close to shore around rocks. The largest walleye was 22.5" and weighed 3.5 pounds.

We fished the bowl, barker flats, the back side of steamboat rock and up towards Jones Bay at various times. It was pretty windy every day but Friday. Wednesday night we thought our tent would blow away with us in it for a while! The water got a little rough at times but wasn't as bad as i was afraid it would be with that much wind. We did get spray over the bow a few times though.

We talked to a bunch of people and most were having about the same luck we were - lots of dinks and a few keepers. We did see several nice size keepers at the cleaning stations though.

It was a fun trip and we will be going back next year for sure :D