Starvation Walleye Hunt

Wednesday Parker and I went to Starvation in search of walleye. We loaded up with all the gear that the "gurus" said was hot. Parker is wanting to land some walleye and has been studying how to fish for them and what to use when to use, how to use....etc. We left the valley at 5:30 and made our way to highway 40 and through Strawberry valley, seeing the steam rising off Strawberry and Soldier Creek was exciting to think the weather is finally turning the corner and the ice will be forming soon in the high country. We launched at 7:15 from the state ramp. The water was choppy and a little stained, 62 degrees.

We headed to the bridge and stopped at the first draw before the bridge and fished this area for about an hour. We fished jig and worm and were 20-30 feet of water where all the posts said to look for the walleye. Parker hooked up a fish coming off the rocks and ledges, but it turned out to be smallmouth bass. We weren't seeing that many fish on the finder so we moved.

We went west of the bridge and starting throwing jigs tipped with a worm. We were in between a couple other boats on the cliffs and seen a couple fish on the finder and got a couple hits while we were in that spot but eventually got nothing. Moving to the east bank and finding a little bit of shade on the bank we continued to cast jigs for a while, after nothing I dead-sticked mine and started throwing a small crankbait to the bank. I caught a few smallmouth bass on the crankbait and near the bridge, I landed a rainbow trout on a crankbait, always fun to land a rainbow with a crankbait good fight.

We continued to fish the bank under and passed the bridge but turned up nothing, so we decided to try trolling a couple different walleye style rapalas. We stayed in the 30-40 foot range and Parker set up his downrigger off the back of the boat. We trolled back into Rabbit Gulch and got a couple hits. I set up and trolled some pop gear and worm trying to entice a few more rainbows. Nothing was happening and the wind started to pick up and white caps were showing so we decided to call it a day. As we decided a microburst wind hit and we really got off the lake fast then with all the rest of the boats that were on the water. We checked with the other fishers as they came in and they didn't have much better luck than we did for the walleye. There were a couple limits of rainbows brought in from the dam and they were using power bait.

We had a great day together even though the fishing wasn't red hot like we were hoping for.