I got a call from my old friend and fishing buddy Brian Neilson. He had a scheme and wanted to know if I would go along. He had done some reading about night fishing for walleye and wanted to try this on Banks Lake. His friend Mike Wren was willing to go along so we launched Brian’s boat at Northrup at around 7:30 on Tuesday evening. Ideally we would be going during the full moon, but the weather was for a warm and calm evening just a few days after it was full. We tried an area on the north side of Steamboat Rock just to get our gear organized, and as the sun set and it grew darker we moved around to the south side. We all had head lamps and Brian had some glow sticks to put on our rod tips so we could see bites. We got some, too, but didn’t land anything until we tried the underwater hump off Steamboat, toward Barker. We had a pretty good bite for a while and landed three walleye and a big smallmouth. We will go again when we have a really full moon. It should help the fishing and visibility.
Brian Nielson (right) and Mike Wren show off a walleye caught while fishing at night on Banks Lake.