Shallow prairie opener

[pikerliker]

I am thinking of fishing a shallow prairie lake in SW MN for the opener this year (haven't decided for sure which one yet). What would your suggestions be for a plan of attack early season on these shallow bowl lakes? Most of them don't have much structure to key on and several of them don't have much in the way of weeds either.

Thanks

[gloomiseye]

I know on the small prairie lake that I fish regularly almost all of the walleyes are concentrated on a fairly large clam bed. If you can find one of them on your lake you may find some eyes.

[gloomiseye]

Double post

[123fish]

Put on a No.5 shad rap and troll. 80% of the locals will be doing the samething. It works.

[gloomiseye]

Put on a No.5 shad rap and troll. 80% of the locals will be doing the samething. It works.

Yup firetiger and perch work best for me. Also had good success this year on minnow raps.

[JohnMickish]

In a lake with no structure or weeds to speak of, your best bet will be to troll a crankbait until you make contact with fish. Once you make conatact you can work the area with a jig if you want to. Depending on what you have for electronics, finding that fish holding "hidden" structure can be tough.

[tjbassmaster]

Most people down here troll, but I like to fish the shoreline because I believe it is the best structure (fallen trees and riprap) that exists in the lake besides a few points which are also more effectively fished by casting. That being said I would cast the shore lines and points with plastics, or jig and minnow.

Also most of the lakes here are shallow but drop of to the max. depth relatively fast. With the steepest drop off being close to shore. So when the fishing is slow using the trolling motor to slow go down the shore line while jigging a minnow or lindy rigging can land some nice fish.