FFF...Frustrating Friday Fishing, Walleye and Crappie

Fished from 6pm Friday until 7am Saturday, watched the sun rise again. Started fishing at 6pm with a couple friends I have not seen since last fall. A few small bass hear and there spent most of the evening talking while fishing. By midnight everyone was gone and I did not realize my retrieve was way to fast on my crank baits. When fishing for walleye and crappie at night you can always slow down your presentation. Fish can hear your bait and feel vibrations in the water, walleye also have great night vision. Walleye are designed to hunt at night by stealth, they prefer to sneak up on your bait. I call big walleye lazy walleye, at least until you set the hook. Then they wake up and can take some drag three or four times. I say this because I got frustrated fishing Friday night and forgot the basics. We all love fishing and we all get frustrated sometimes. If you are not catching fish with your favourite lucky lure, and you know the fish are there...STOP...Take a minute to think about presentation ( SPEED and DEPTH of BAIT ect. ) Now if the fish are not feeding so be it, you can't do much about that. In my case it was my fault for not paying attention to what I was doing. So I slowed down and went shallow, stayed with my two favourite crank baits. Around 1am a walleye, but a half inch too big. About 2am another walleye, but this one was a full inch too big. Almost 3am and another walleye, but about an inch and a half too big. Frustrated again but kept fishing, remembering to stick with what was working. At 4am I got lucky a walleye that just scraped in a hair under maximum size. It measured a satisfying 19.6 inches, I used my glasses. LOL. Decided to fish until the sun came up and learned a valuable lesson. Pay attention to what and how I am fishing. The fish and the water are never the same, neither is the weather. Mother nature is tricky and crafty, and has a sense of humor. Sometimes at our expense. Stay safe and good luck out there all.

Awesome! We had a similar but different experience requiring a tactics change in July fishing walleye all week with live leeches on slip floats and jigs. One night we were fishing and marking tons of walleye but they were not interested in any of our live bait presentations….. I decided to switch to an aggressive tactic and jigged a small vibrato aggressively above the fish, well wouldn’t you know it, smash smash smash one after the other. Sometimes you need to deviate from tried and true, or just pay attention to what you are doing.

Nice looking golden walleye.

A well taught lesson teach. Hope I can remember it given my short term memory issues....lol.

Thanks,

Yes, you are 100% right, sometimes fisherman needs to be creative and not lazy to try and play differently, when it happens you not always realize that is the case, keep trying favorite lure and time's gone... LOL

Thank you for the replies. I was off all electronics for a few days, only used my phone twice. I told everyone I would be busy celebrating our anniversary. Spent Monday night until today walking around Niagara Falls. Also under the table rock in the new Tunnel, which is not new it's very old........ Back to fishing. Yup fish and how you get lucky catching those fish is always changing. Some people ask me if I get bored fishing. How could I get bored with something that is never the same. Always challenging from small fish to big fish, and from a boat to the shore. Not just challenging to your mind, but to your body if you like hiking or canoeing to your favourite place to fish.

This tunnel under the rock beside the falls is quite intimidating when you are in there alone. Amazing to see all they have to show at the museum as well. So glad we took the time to experience something new. I don't know too much about electricity but enough not to put my finger in a wall socket and not to fish in the lightning. LOL.

Happy anniversary!

Thank you RM it was a great time away with so much to do there. Been going to the falls since I was a kid. My parents spent their honeymoon there in 1962. Like I said on another post, I think there is water in my blood. LOL.

Talk about nailing it… couldn’t have said it better. Great report and happy anniversary 👍🏽

Talk about nailing it… couldn’t have said it better. Great report and happy anniversary 👍🏽

Thank you Drew. Back to fishing soon, fall weather looks favorable. Looking forward to some long days and nights of cool fishing temperatures. Also looking forward to some great reports and pictures from all you people on the fishing forum. Good luck and stay safe.

Nice fishes, we never know what kind of fish you may get without keeping trying(like you said SPEED and DEPTH of BAIT ect.), I did overnight fishing many years ago when I was young, I may try again later, hope will see you on the Balsam lake,

Good luck and stay safe out there at night or day. The next seven days have seven wind changes and a major temperature shift. A couple of days and nights have some good wind gusts. There is some rain here and there as well. I am going up to Balsam and Sturgeon, and it will be like going to a casino. Find the right spot and all the fish ( bass, crappie, and walleye ) will be huddled together in a mixed school at night this week. If I don't find those spots, there will just be words on my posts instead of fish pictures. This will be a very weird week, next week looks more stable so far, but that could change as well. I like weird weather because I am usually the only one out in it. The fish are always there....just have to hope they are hungry.

So true!!

How could you ever get bored when there's an endless amount of techniques and gear one could never dream of mastering them all??

I always throw rattletraps around my buddy who never uses them - I make it my goal to catch a fish in every spot we go to (within reason) with a rattletrap just to show him different ways are possible from what he already figured out in his favourite spots lol high levels of success so far with walleyes and some bass and pike lol

BUT my favourite thing about fishing has always been fishing a new place - trying to figure out what the fish want - where they are - etc. Often times it's not what one might expect lol and you're trying new things not the same ooooooold fishin hole every time.

Who wants to do that anyways? lol

Tight lines!

Well said, Jstubbs.