This past weekend marked my last major fishing trip of 2008 before the hunting season gets into full swing, and my second trip this month to Devils Lake. Fishing picked up right where it left off 2 weeks ago, and with the water temp down another 6 degrees (from 66 degrees to 60); the fish were getting a bit more shallow. This trip had every variation of the weather, from hot to cold, and calm to windy.

My buddy got in touch with a couple pounds of jumbo leeches, and I’m sure we were one of the only one’s on the lake using any leeches of any size. They took full advantage of them by using slip bobbers in some solid locations. Overall, the average size fish was up a couple inches from 2 weeks ago, but the weekend was still ruled by fish in the lower to middle teens (size in inches).

Since we had caught so many fish last trip, I really wanted to target bigger fish and felt I could find them with cranks. In talking to a few fishermen, most of the larger fish were in fact being taken on cranks so I wasn’t the only one with that in mind. Only 10 minutes into my initial troll did I land my first fish over 20”, so I kept on for the remainder of the weekend. I spent most of my time fishing between 10-15′. The fish weren’t in that magic depth of 8-9′ which has been so kind to me in the spring, but they were close. Wherever I found structure around 10-11′, I found fish. And if that location had a muddy bottom, the average size was larger.

I ran around a half dozen styles of lures but #4 Salmo Hornets and #5 Jointed Rapala’s worked the best. Each day a different color was hot. I don’t know why but I find this to be true almost every trip I take up to Devils Lake. The first day we really cleaned up on the #4 Salmo’s in Clown color. By the end of the trip it didn’t seem to matter as long as the lure was blue, although we did take the most on jointed Rapalas in that color. Whenever we ran shallow, it was the planer boards that produced the most fish.

Overall, it was another great trip out to Devils Lake. I ran into some familiar faces at the bar when we ate dinner, and that’s always a welcome sight when you’re on the road. Most of the people were catching fish, it was the nicer fish that were mostly hard to come by.