July 24th Weekend Oahe Report

[Hutch]

This weekend on the lower end of OAHE (PIERRE AREA) was as busy as I can remember it. Boats everywhere and guess what, I think just about everybody caught all the fish they wanted to. I think for now we can all thank the GFP's for a well done job of fish management. Some of it is mother nature sure but I think some can be traced back to John Cooper and his crew when they put the limits to 14 fish to reduce fish populations so bait fish could come back both in numbers and size. If you don't think that worked come up here and go fishing. There are baitfish all over the place and all different year classes of walleye's going back 6 or 8 years. I am not sure how much bait is being run out with the high water but everywhere I go there are clouds of bait so hopefully the current high releases will have a minimal effect on the current baitfish population. It will be interesting to see what the GFP's has to say about this. Fishing from the Dam all up and down the river is excellent along with the weather so there is no doubt that July and I think August will go down once again as our best two months of fishing. I fished repeat customers Jeb and Mary Piles from Malcom, Ne. to as good a stringer of walleye and bass as I have had this year catching both of there over's (24 and 25 inchers) and we kept one of my over's (23 incher) and then only kept fish from 18 to 19 inches We probably caught and released over 50 more walleye. They would have liked to weight these fish in any tournament. This isn't bragging as a lot of boats are doing the same thing right now. These fish were all caught in around 20 ft of water which means you can mark them with your fish finders making hunting them easier. We just got as far away from other boats as we could and then monitored points until I saw good numbers of fish with not too much bait around and dropped down a night crawler on a bttm/bouncer for these fish. If you want to catch bigger fish avoid the community spots and go hunting. It pays off in more numbers of fish and much better size. We never fished around another boat all day and caught fish on every point we fished. This is easier to do because it seems like a lot of the boats are concentrated around areas closer to the boat ramps leaving miles of shoreline no one is fishing. You can jump in with all the other boats if you want and I am sure you will catch fish but is this really getting away from it all for a few day's? I try as much as I can to avoid the crowds for my customer's and I think they all have a much better time when we fish in area's with very little boat traffic. Sometimes it is hard to do as it seems when you stop other boats come but if there is a bite I usually just move on as the fun part of walleye fishing to me is finding them. It is real easy to spot another boat and go fishing there but I think you are missing the best part of the sport. Hunting the walleye. It is what in my opinion separate's the really good walleye fishermen from the average fisherman. All the best fishermen I know are hunters of the fish first. Catching and eating are great but really secondary to the art of finding the fish. Learn how to hunt the walleye and you will end up enjoying the sport more. Fish are biting just about every way from trolling plugs live bait fishing with crawlers/ leeches/ minnows (harder to keep alive now) and bouncers or lindy rigs. No reports on Salmon but I think it is spotty Not much traffic on Lake Sharpe due to closed area's and higher current. I also think this is one reason why Oahe is so busy around the Pierre area along with a good bite. I did hear the boat ramp is now open at farm island state park giving access to antelope creek area's on Sharpe. I am not sure about the bite at West Bend but did hear it was off some.

Hutch