Today's Feature Fishing Report: Jeff Sundin - June 17, 2026 "Walleyes, Sinking to New Depths"

"I don’t believe in fishing deep water, and you already know that if you’ve followed any of my articles about barotrauma and its impact on freshwater fish.

I do believe in fishing shallow water vegetation, and you know that too, especially if you’ve followed any of my mid-summer fishing reports from roughly the past 20 years or so.

Okay, but how do I handle a situation where the weeds in shallow water are filled with small northern pike. I don’t mean an occasional attack by small northerns; I don’t even mean frequent scissor-bill attacks. I’m talking about a situation where there are hundreds of them, so many that we can’t move 20 feet without catching another one. That’s what’s been happening this week, the northern pike, mainly little ones are on a feeding frenzy, catching 100, or even more of them are happening on a routine trip, not an exceptional one.

On Tuesday, Bobby Cox, regularly mentioned in many of these reports, was in the boat, sharing the experience with his friend Larry Horseman. Now for Bobby, catching and harvesting pike is great, he’s more than happy to gather some of the fatter ones for the trip back home. In fact, we captured some yesterday and had them as part of our “shore-dinner” prepared at the Winnie Dam.

Larry, on the other hand, leans a bit more in the direction of catching walleyes, at least that’s the goal. So, for me, trading spots frequently and checking for walleyes in alternative locations was a big part of the fishing trip yesterday. The search, eventually, led us to a school of nice walleyes that were located along the breaklines of mid-lake bars into the lake’s deepest, soft bottom “mudflats”.

Wait a minute Jeff, you said you don’t like fishing deep water, what were you doing out there in the mid-lake basin? Well, depth is a relative term, and for frequent readers, my answer might already be obvious. In recent years, I have gone to great lengths to discover lakes that don’t even have “deep Water”. I like to find lakes that feature mid-lake structures in maximum depths of 25 to 30 at the most, many of which are even shallower, like the one we fished yesterday, featuring a max depth of about 25 feet.

After searching for a while, we located fish located out-and-around scattered rocks and gravel near the drop into soft bottom areas. I noticed that if we fished on the rocks, northern pike were still plentiful. If we moved further away from the rocks, and focused on the semi-hard, sand or marl instead, we could catch a higher percentage of walleyes.

On this particular day, the secret was location, not presentation, focusing on that semi-soft transition area made all the difference. There, jigs tipped with minnows were absolutely the walleyes preferred presentation. Night crawlers, or leeches, baits that I typically use to attract more walleyes than pike were mostly rejected. I think we caught 2 walleyes on worms, and 1 on a leech. Otherwise, minnows on jigs accounted for the entire catch. So, avoiding areas that held pike was the only way to avoid them and their attacks on the jigs and minnows.

For us, the key depth was about 16 feet, and the jigs weights were a little outside of their ideal ranges. We caught some fish on ¼ ounce jigs, but they were a little too heavy. We caught some fish on 1/8-ounce jigs too, but they were just a little bit too light. Luckily, the wind finally slowed, and we were able to move slowly, and fish the lighter, 1/8-ounce jigs effectively enough to trigger a good number of walleye strikes.

If you’re fishing a lake with a high percentage of “legal” eating size fish and you plan to harvest them to eat, then it doesn’t really matter where you catch them, if you stop when you’ve gathered your eaters. But if your goal is to continue to catch and release fish, then avoiding deep water becomes much more important.

Without lingering on my soap box too long, let me just mention that releasing fish caught in deep water is NOT a good idea. Most folks use 30 feet of water as the so-called threshold for barotrauma impacts. Yes, it’s true that the deeper we go, the worse the problem gets, but even fish caught in 20 to 25 to 30 feet of water can sometimes suffer from barotrauma. Add to that the impact of warming water temperatures, and questionable fish handling skills and it is certain; some percentage of the fish we “release” will perish. Released fish that die are just as dead as the ones we keep and eat. So, as responsible anglers, we need to learn to factor in the “harvest rate” of fish we catch and release too.

Today, Bobby requested perch as the target and Larry, willing to go along with that, gave up his hopes for catching smallmouth. Hoping for a lucky break, I’m going to try taking advantage of the rain and cloudy skies. Leech Lake, a known producer of both perch and smallmouth, is on my mind. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I can make both of them happy with a dual mission. Tomorrow, I’ll let you know." — Jeff Sundin, The Early Bird Fishing Guide Call-Text 218-245-9858 • Email • Facebook • X • Subscribe Insider Newsletter

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Lake Winnie Cutfoot Sioux Fishing Report June 5, 2026

"Walleye fishing on Lake Winnibigoshish has been a tale of heroes and zeros. Some days, yesterday’s zeros are today’s heroes, and other days, yesterday’s heroes are today’s zeros. Land at the right school of fish, at the right time, and you’ll score a great catch. Miss out on the timing, and it could be a struggle.

There are a handful of areas that have, and continue to hold good schools of fish, that’s the good news. The trouble is that those areas are widely known, and the fish in these regions have been heavily pursued. With all that pressure, the term “boat shy”, pops up frequently when anglers talk about their fishing trips. Many boaters report finding and spotting fish on their electronics but then go on to say that they struggle to make those fish bite.

An important lesson to remember is that despite being heavily pursued, those “boat shy” fish must still feed at some point on most days. So, the trick to success is to ..." Read >> Bowen Lodge Lake Winnie Fishing Report June 5, 2026

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