moses report

this is a test to see if i can load pics

looks good to me.

looks like i figured it out so here is he report. Day1 was a complete bust for walleye but we did get into some nice smallmouth. Day two we changed our tactics for walleye and started gettin them good along with the smallie i took the picture of. Day three was awesome for walleye and we caught eight between us. I know this probably doesn't sound too great for alot of you but for us walleye amateurs i thought it was a success. By the way my fishin partner for the weekend was rod_holder who comes on here occasionally

and here is on of the fillets that we didn't eat

sweet! looks like i should have gone east this weekend. i will have to go soon.....

8 walleyes sounds good to me for anyone! :-) Nice fish and pics.

Congrats Urban. Time for a fish fry http://www.websmileys.com/sm/drink/trink23.gif

We had a great trip. As you can see by the pics the weather was nice and the walleye were biting. And boy are they tasty!! Thanks for the tips Slab.

Yea definitely throwing jigs instead of trolling is the way to go. On day 2 and 3 trollers wre not gettin anything but apparently it had been really hot hot right before we got there but i thought the fishing was hot compared to the places i am used to goin.

Looks like a good day to me!

tell us a little more about your jig "throwing". Did they work better for the walleye and which channel were you fishing?

jigs were the only thing we caught walleye on,it was just an 1/8th ounce jighead with a grub. we were fishing the main channel and we got some ohe flats and some on rocky drop offs

i have never got a walleye on a grub. (i haven't got many in general :( ). it seems like when ever i try for them i have very little luck but when i am fishing for something else i get them. i was crappie fishing last year at the dock tournament at mar-don and got the winner doing that. and another time at the potholes i was trolling when my dad picked up the tackle box........ and it wasn't closed :( . so we stoped out in the middle of the sand dunes and i just started casting my shadrap and caught a nice 21" right there. and i didn't get another one that trip.

well the main thing i learned about walleye, and this is only my second attempt at walleye. is that the key to catching them seems to be a slow presentation, like if they were bass in cold water. Fast trolling for walleye means 1.5 mph according to the people i talked to over there. It also seemed like they liked the same places basically as smallmouth so it was nice to get to fish for two things at once

i always catch bass when i am fishing for them to. caught some real nice largies last year trolling in the dunes with shadraps. caught a couple on swimbaits to. to bad bass don't taste as good as wallys. they get a free pass...... the walleyes arn't as lucky :D

When we were throwing the jigs, the people trolling looked at us like we were crazy....until we started pulling in fish after fish and they were busy getting their bottom bouncers snagged in the rocks. It was nice being the only people consistently catching fish, and doing in a way that nobody else was. And like urban said, it was awesome to fish for both wallies and smallies at the same time.

Very nice fish.. I need to fish moses more often.

yea moses seems like a really nice lake. there is so much great lookin water to fish it is overwhelming. another thing about it that was hard for me to adjust to waast the the eges you wanted to fish were sometimes so far off shore it seemed ridiculous because in lake washington it would be 60 - 100 feet deep that far from shore. sometimes i felt like i was just casting into the middle of nowhere. it was also fun gettin to see some smallies on the underwater camera lookin at my jig and then suckin it in. one thing i forgot to mention in my report was that the first walleye i caught had a bent backbone or somethin like that. has anyone else ever seen this? it was kind of wierd lookin but it tasted great

another cool thing about that lake is that it is stuffed with walleye. (good for anglers, bad for panfish). i am really glad they changed the regulations in moses and the potholes so you can keep smaller ones and more of them. i got quite a few small ones when i was perch fishing there in february that i could probably keep know :mad:

Jigs are the only way to go I think. Trolling is fun but you'll catch more and bigger fish by targeting structure and bouncing jigs off it. If the wind is blowing (like it does most of the time out there) I'll set up a slip float with a jig, cast it up wind of the structure, and let the wind push the jig over the structure while the waves do all the jigging. I've nail some big trout out there while using the float as well. The float setup is killer back in the dunes if you fish the areas that have current. Also, the humps outside the dunes are a good place to try it.

I hear you on people looking at you like you're nuts LOL!!! When I fish out there in the early spring during the spawn I fish some unusual spots. I'll motor back up Lind Coulee past the bridge and follow the channel with my depth finder. I'll find a bend in the channel with willows next to it. Then I'll pull right up to the willows and cast into the holes and pockets between them with a grub. Almost looks like I'm crappie fishing lol. I catch more than enough walleye that way....fish that would otherwise go untouched.

Hey guys, I agree Moses and usually potholes jigging is the way to go for 'eyes.Last time I fished Scooteney I only used a 1/16 oz(black/ chart.)jig and got many 'eyes, bass , good sized perch, enough crappie for a big fry, and the largest bluegill I've ever seen. For some reason trolling works best for me at Banks when chasing walleye. later

Yeah Slab, the mornings were really calm but just after noon every day the wind picked up and made it a little harder to fish. You don't have quite as much feel when jigging when the wind is blowing so hard. The slip float idea sounds awesome. We will have to try that one next time we are there. And youre right about catching bigger walleye when fishing structure. We didn't see any trollers catching fish that had much size but with the jigs on the rocky dropoffs we were pulling in some real nice sized fish.

I didn't make it to Moses this spring as I had some things come up but I am going to try and head over towards the end of June and either fish Moses or The Potholes. I did well last year at Moses, 2nd week of May, with a slip float, a gold aberdeen hook and a plain old leech. I found a little ditch on the north end flats that was about 9ft deep while the rest was 6-7. I anchored up and sat there and you'd have thought I was committing murder by all the glares I was getting. I think I interrupted their trolling pattern!:p

we were getting a good number of glares when we were anchored too. I like to think it was because we were catching more fish that everybody else. Sounds like I really need to go back over and try out that slip float rig. We talked to a couple people that said leeches were the way to go but we did pretty well with the grubs tipped with worm. I dont think I will ever try and troll again though. It is just way more fun to throw jigs.