WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
May 18, 2006

A week of cold has now turned into a few days of sunshine, but the challenge has now been the wind. Even with the challenges that have faced us, we have found some good action on Winnie and I think the best bite is just hours away. It feels great to be back on the water after the long Winter. The new boat is absolutely amazing and it can catch fish. It looks to be a very nice forecast for this next few days and I will be on Winnie for each of the next three days. Look for Mallard point and the Raven areas to be active in the next few days.

A week into the 2006 open water season and most anglers are talking about the weather more then anything it seems. The weather has certainly brought some challenges early in this season, but the nice part of it is the weather can only get better and the wind has to let up at some point.

Winnie is where I have planted my boat this week and again the fishing remains very good to challenging. With the water temperatures ranging from 53-55 degree, the fish and minnows are starting to show signs of schooling, and late this week we did find some active schools in that 6-8 feet of water. As the water temps push that 58-60 degree mark, I would expect to find large school concentrating in the shallow water of many areas on Winnie.

Many of the typical hot spots for the early season, including tamarack point, the dishes, the rockpile, and mallard point all have fish eating throughout the day. The active depths have mainly been 9-11 feet. It seems the parrot or watermelon 1/8 MAXGAP jig tipped with a spot-tail silver shiner is the best producer. We have found times throughout the day where an aggressive jigging motion triggers many more bites, and then it seems that the fish shut down and we have had to go to a slow-long jigging motion.

Many of the other local lakes are producing walleyes, with similar results. Red Lake has been as expected, awesome, but with the high winds, I don't feel that the true meaning of pure catching has shown itself.

So with the season upon us, and the best action of the Spring to come, plan a trip fishing and get a child to come with you.

See ya on the water.

Sean Colter
www.seancolter.com
member of the NMLOG's