Gale force winds were blowing across the prairies as I headed up to Tobin Lake last week. When I arrived there seven and half hours later my friend was up on his roof in Carrot River replacing some shingles that had blown off. Thanks goodness that evening the winds dropped off and were pretty much negligible when we launched the boat the next day to fish the large part of the reservoir. You don’t want to be on Tobin Lake itself when the wind is really blowing.
As we headed out we noticed how dirty the water was, never mind all the floating debris including weeds and logs. This was to dramatically affect the fishing and we left at the end of the day not having caught a walleye. With the conditions on the main lake that bad we made sure to spend the next two days on the river section of the reservoir near the town of Nipawin. It is a fairly long stretch of river, but it does get a tremendous amount of angling pressure during the open water season. Still when the water temperatures plummet huge balls of bait enter the river, with large numbers of big walleye not too far behind.
On day three the fish really turned on and we had a fabulous day of fishing with a number of walleye over seven pounds landed, the largest one near 11 pounds that I managed to catch. We were just using jigs tipped with a salted shiner most of the day as we drifted with the current. We had tried crankbaits the second day but only managed a bunch of pike. Not so the afternoon of the third day. We put the cranks down and had five fish in fifteen minutes to end the day.
Right now is a great time to head up as the fishing should remain strong until freeze up.