Fishing at Johnson Reservoir

August 15th

Saturday morning Tim Long and I took off nice and early for Johnson Reservoir. Everyone has told me how good the walleye fishing has been there all summer. We thought that we could get there early and beat the crowd. We did just that. However, the fog was so heavy we couldn't see 10' in front of the boat for over 4 hours. We idled out of the boat ramp and pretty much followed the shore to the first point. There was fish showing on the locator just off the drop on this point so we trolled #5 jointed shad raps back and forth across it. We managed to catch some small white bass but no walleye. Even though we couldn't see we decided to idle across the lake and head towards the outlet. I had heard earlier in the year that the drops there were producing some eyes but before we got there we ran into some drops with the fish just stacked off of them on the locator so we trolled the same crankbaits up and down these drops from 12'-20' of water. We weren't catching anything so we decided to switch over to leadcore line so we could maintain contact with the bottom. We fished this area until about noon and still hadn't caught any walleye. The fog had lifted by then and there were a lot of boats trolling and jigging this area. We did see a couple of boats catch a couple of eyes, but most were catching some little white bass and that was about it. We finally decided to try the outlet area and as soon as we got there, we caught about a 16" eye and then we both hooked up on huge carp. We had a big mess of lines but managed to land them both. These things were between 12 and 15 pounds and really put up a fight but we really had a mess. We spent the rest of the afternoon just making passes back and forth and up and down the break line and managed to catch another 16" and another 18" walleye. We couldn't stay for the evening bite so we had to get off the lake around 4:00 pm. We talked to some other anglers before we left and our catch seemed to be one of the better ones for the day. I am sure if we could have stayed until dark, we would have caught some more. Tim said that this next week they may start dropping the water level. I really hope that I can get back and try it again before the water level gets real low. Johnson is worth a trip or two or three!

Hope to see you on the water,

-Bill

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