Fall Fishing Effort Finally Pays Off!

[hanson]

I set a big goal this year to fish walleyes hard this fall. I catfish all summer, duck hunt in the fall, and then eagerly await ice to kick off the ice fishing season. Realizing that I've been missing out on the best time of the year to walleye fish, I decided to make it a priority.

The majority of my effort has been concentrated on night trolling crankbaits. In the last few months, I've trolled on Cass Lake, Lake Mille Lacs, and Lake Minnetonka. Cass and Mille Lacs were both productive yielding some nice walleyes in the 22-26" range. Nice fish but not what I was after.

Finally... without much open water time left, I connected with a beauty on the Minnesota River tonight. Technique was classic walleye fishing, a jig & minnow combo worked slowly along a current seam. Water temp was 32 degrees. Ice chunks/sheets were floating by. Wind was howling near 30mph. Minnow bucket was icing over. It was brutally cold out. And to top it off, I slipped and fell on the boat ramp and hit the ground real hard. Ouch!

The result was this hog of a 28" Walleye pushing the scale to 9 1/2 lbs.

Do I ever love my Limit Creek rod for this type of fishing! This big girl really put up a great fight but the Limit Creek brought her to the boat!

Time to bring on the ice, eh?

[PerchJerker]

Great job Chris, you're a diehard. Beauty of a fish.

[Trucker Jim]

Nice, nice fish! I too, decided to look for that trophy this fall, I took vacation during the second week of November, but didn't find mine on the sippi until about a week ago. Pic is still in the camera. 27.5". Love those big fat fall river eyes!

[Maximum12]

Nice fish & a great story!

I keep saying...this is the year I'm going to keep my boat out until ice-up & learn to find those late-season walleyes...but that year hasn't arrived yet. Maybe in '08!

[Jim Almquist]

You paid your dues and got rewarded I am jealous cause you caught it with my favorite type of presentation-good old jig and minnow.

[MuleShack]

Nice Fish Hanson!

Persistence pays off.

Did she put up a big fight being that cold or was it more of a dead weight?

[hanson]

Quote:

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Did she put up a big fight being that cold or was it more of a dead weight?

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Oh no... she was a pretty darn good fight. My biggest concern was pulling the hook loose so I let her run around quite a bit. I had another fish pop off within seconds of setting the hook and missed a couple other good bites as well. They were biting really light and getting good hooksets was troublesome. Alot of the time, they would pick the bait up and you had no idea until you went to jig again and a fish was there, which would result in poor hooksets. I really thought I could lose that fish at any minute and thats what really made it interesting.

[fiskyknut]

Hey nice ones man.

Did it fight?? .. Too funny!!

Maybe if it's possible walk on the ice over that hole soon Chris and get a PB thru the ice maybe?

[Team Otter]

Nice fish Chris.

[fishuhalik]

Whew, beauty fish! That thing has some great girth. Congrats on a monster!