Spent the week fishing for walleye, smallies and perch - stayed the week at Steamboat (Steamboat gets a 5 rating). Monday 9/18
started windy with white caps and rollers, so took the hint from the CrazyCoyote and headed for the area across from Jones bay
and trolled for a couple of miles - did good with one 22" 'eye and a mix of smaller eyes. Tried the usual colors and all did OK - green,
purple/red, chartreuse , olive. Tuesday - got in a good morning in the same area until the wind and rain came in - it was ugly too - wind
was from the east and retrieving the boat was very exciting - rode a roller onto the trailer accompanied by a very quick stop.
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the wind calmed enough to work Barker flats - the secret was 20-24 FOW staying just out of
the weeds/milfoil - started trolling toward the launch ramp from the rock that the white pelicans have spent the summer on - trolled
to the old roadbed and headed east immediately to stay out of the rocks, then when the water starts getting deeper (>30-40') make
a turn to the south until past the roadbed and then turn back in toward the west shore/trees - when we got to the weeds did a quick
180deg and headed back toward the submerged "island" - managed a walleye in 55' and drug it from the bottom on 6#line - 23".
FYI: didn't have any success with flickershads - smile blades, colorado blades, indiana blades, some with slow death, others with
a #2 and a treble stinger - the purple/red combo worked best when cloudy, the greener colors when the sun shined. Troll speed
varied from .8-9 to 1.1-1.2 - all speeds seemed to be equally successful. Will probably make a trip in a week or two to give the whitefish
a try - there are quite a few boats fishing at the mouth of old devil's lake - scoped them at 85-90' right on the bottom. Water temp dropped
from 66deg to 62deg from Monday to Friday - night temps were in the low 40's which helps to explain it - water level is within 1' of full.