Today I pointed the boat West and splashed waves until I could not see the crowds of anglers. I was looking for better sized fish or "keeper walleye".

I did find them but had to use a few tricks to help resize these walleye. What I ended up doing was targeting higher rock humps, deeper sand points and even some tiny little gravel humps you get with your Upper Red Lake guide instruction book. Then I busted out the planer boards and #5 Shad Raps. Yes sir planer boards and Shad Raps the first week of season.

The set-up was simply a thing of beauty. I set the raps to run about three-four feet of the bottom around the humps and just tick the top of the hump on the trip over the top. On Upper Red your larger fish will often lay in ambush point off the humps curled up and ready to strike a lower strike zone and your younger smaller walleye will run on top of the bar and suspend high off the sides. My guess this is an "Old bull/Young bull deal". What ever makes these fish do this is great! The following stats will show.

I fished walleye for 1.5 hours
I boated 12 fish or one every 7.5 minutes.
Five of those fish fit into the keeper mark or 42%
I seen zero boats/zero crowding/zero bumper boats
I was able to get my keeper walleye and go fish pike after 1.5 hours

So if you are sick and tired of the crowd and constantly having to throw back in slot fish give it a try this weekend, your nerves will thank you.

Good post. A lot of people think that it has to be warm before they will hit a crankbait tbut that is not true. I have caught them on cranks with planer boatrds like that in 35 degree water.

Catch any northerns doing that? Drum?

Great post Jonny P.

Jonny, great information. It is more enjoyable to not only get away from the crowd but also to figure out a pattern and use your skills to outsmart them.

With water temps this cold, do you need to slow down your trolling speed?

Jon: What advantage would it be to use a board on Red when you can only fish one line? I troll with floating Rapalas a lot and use a light weight to get it away from the boat. A reel with a counter now that would be a big help for keeping the lure where the fish are.

My first experience with boards was this spring fishing Lake Erie with Pat Foster, guide, (Club Red). They worked great in deep water with 4 guys and 8 lines out.

Good luck.

The way I see it I am running cranks over the tops of these bars that may only be 4-7 feet deep, it has to spook the fish. Now if you watch a fish when it is spooked it takes off sideways. So I would rather fish relaxed fish or fish moving to the side of my boat instead of the ones directly under my boat that just had a prop buzz over there head. Just think Hal if a prop came ripping acrosss your ceiling the last thing on your mind would be to make a sandwich. I have always outproduced using boards on Red for Walleye and pike.

As for the other question about trolling speed, yes I do slow it down. Just enough speed to get the rap to kick. Last night I was able to run .8-1.0 MPH.

Show us some photos of some huge pike Oh Pike Master. I would bet you will be on them soon.

Jonny P, have you ever tried casting crank baits to those fish on top?

Yes I have and it does work as the season goes on although one thing to remember is on Upper Red Lake we don't have the sharp up ward side then a flat top and a sharp downward drop that is so classic on so many walleye lakes. What we have is a slow climb onto "dome" shaped humps that span 1/4 to 1/2 mile wide, the trolling just covers more water then casting it.

Now we have some smaller sharper rockpiles that hard diving cranks casted on to the sides is deadly if you can fit your boat into the crowd around those little rock piles.

Got it.

HA! Good stuff. Well put.

"Just think Hal if a prop came ripping acrosss your ceiling the last thing on your mind would be to make a sandwich."

But the first thing on his mind might be to put down the Brandy bottle.

The heck with the sandwich.

Was it a Walleye sandwich.