I woke up to a flat tire on my boat trailer last Friday, and I thought our trip to Banks Lake was a bust. However, one of my fishing buddies, Dennis Beich, offered to meet us at Big Wally’s with his boat, so Rollie Schmitten and I threw our gear in my truck and off we went. We launched at Million Dollar Mile and for quite a while thought we should have stayed home. We were getting a few bites, but by noon had nothing in the live well. Then the wind picked up and the walleye bite came on. We started hooking fish and even landing them in the small trout net that Dennis had along. He tried to stay in about 27 feet of water and trolled along the shore below Rosebush. The motor oil Smile Blade and the Dutch Fork Butterfly Blade in the Blue Tiger color were the two lures that did the trick. Dennis struggled with our boat speed in the high winds. We were doing as high as 1.8 mph at times, but it didn’t matter, the walleye kept biting. We reeled in our gear and headed for the launch at 2:30 with 16 walleye in the cooler.
We got 16 walleye on Banks with a good number measuring from 16 to 21 inches.