Fishing Report Lakes Oahe/Sharpe Pierre area 5th thru the 8th August 2015

[Hutch]

I guided two fellows from down Nebraska way for a Stewart Fertilizer paid trip. They put limits of average 18 inch size walleye along with some big smallmouth bass, Northern Pike and Catfish as bonus fish both days. They had all of their over 20 inch fish (one 26 1/2 incher) in their possession limits along with nice fish meals while they were here. I fished them on Oahe in mostly depths around 50 feet. We used bottom Bouncer/crawler/chubs for bait and the big fish won their company tournament. Sharpe at West Bend is still putting out limits of smaller fish but over all size of walleye's is still much better on Oahe. Experienced angler's getting to the right spots /depths are doing well especially on the nicer 18/ 19 inch fish. Leech's minnow and some plug fishing are all coming into play on both lakes. Plenty of fly's around some days so bug/fly repellant are a very good thing to have along with plenty of water. I think many angler's are intimidated with fishing deep depths but try and put 45 to 50 fow in proper perspective. That is just twice the length of most boats. I fish down to those depths with all the same presentations I normally use but keep some bullet weights in the boat and slide them on bouncers to get the weight up around 2 ounces. In big wind it is harder forcing long drifts to stop tangled lines. Right now on Oahe there is just a lot of bait way down taking a big portion of the predator fish down with them. If you can't catch them up in shallow water and you are struggling try the deep but also remember it is much harder to catch and release these deep fish so you may end up with some smaller fish that are un-releasable in your bag.

Hutch's Guide Service

Hutch