When August rolls around, fishing everywhere can get a bit tough at times. While fishing for us lately has been fantastic, you can’t always bank on great fishing this time of year. Mid-Summer walleyes tend to go deeper and scatter, so that’s when I get into seek and destroy mode with my electronics and start trolling walleyes.
Before I even stick my baits in the water, I tend to troll up and down points and flats, looking for marks and signs of life. Depending on how deep your lake is, the fish may be in the basins or holding tight to deeper structure. The lake we’ve been fishing lately, Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota, averages over 100 ftw. So there’s OODLES of places for them to located. For us lately, it’s been back a bit shallower trolling crankbaits in the upper 20’s and lower 30’s (feet of water). We cruised around some large flats and found the fish in those areas in good numbers.
For us, we tend to stick to larger crankbaits this time of year, especially when dealing with a larger forage base in our waters. We use long stickbaits such as the Berkeley Flicker Minnow and Deep Walleye Bandits. We tend to have clearer water so we’re having our best luck on natural colors. If dealing with dirtier water, go with brighter colors. Of course, this can vary day to day so don’t get too hung up on one particular style or color.
If you’re spending a lot of time at a depth and you’re simply not marking fish, you’re going to have to re-adjust. It not unusual, in some waters, to be trolling leadcore and snap weights in 40+ feet of water so be prepared for anything and any depths on the fly.
So with everything being said, be prepared to spend a lot of time looking as fish shift in and out of long flats. And don’t be afraid to use planer boards to help cover ground!
Tight lines and good fishing…
