Rainy River Brutes
After 3 days fishing on the Rainy River, this is the report I have based on the area I was fishing. I was lucky enough to be able to get in on some walleye fishing as well.
The river was clearer than average with the farther you went upstream, the cleaner the water was getting. That had a huge impact on the walleye bite. We stayed around the sportsman lodge area.
We fished walleyes from the resorts area all the way up too Vidas landing and caught walleye everywhere. The best bite and quality of walleye came from the Vidas area. Many 25 inch + fish were caught using a 3/4 oz jig head tipped with emerald shiner was what we had our best bite on. Keeping the jig as vertical as possible helped. Now that walleye is closed it was on to the sturgeon report.
Again we fished from the lake up to Royal Dutchman resort. We caught sturgeon everywhere we tried. We caught smaller sturgeon towards the resorts and out to the gap. Our best luck was upstream about 1/4 mile from The Timber Mill launch in Baudette.
There we landed almost every nice sturgeon during our trip without a single small one. We were fishing on the side of the deeper holes on the US side in about 22ft water.
For all the fishermen fishing over the line, I do not recommend it. I saw the Canadian conservation officer’s ticket people twice. Once at about 10pm. So watch where you are fishing.