Friend Sammy Vigneri has been raving about the amazing walleye fishing around Casper, Wyoming for years. Casper is a good five hours from my house so although we make plans, I still hadn’t made the trip – that is till this weekend. Today Granny and I joined Sammy and his son Robert on Glendo Reservoir.
Though an excellent fly fisher, Sammy has yet to toss a fly for walleye. He pursues them the old fashion way, with lures and jigs. Sam even brings along the minnow bucket full of fatheads. If you follow my blog than you know there’s not a fish I don’t chase with the fly and there’s plenty of walleye stories just this year going back to June on Lake Mill Lacs. It was my goal this weekend to prove to Sammy he should be chasing his walleyes with sinking lines and Clouser type flies.
Our weather was unbelievable. It was an out-of-season 80° and we didn’t have an ounce of wind. Eastern Wyoming always has wind. If you’re wondering what that does for the fishing – its not good. This wasn’t simply and Indian summer day, it was a walleye fishing disaster!
Walleye fishing during the day is always a challenge. Walleye hold tight to bottom during the day and often times in 20 feet or more of water. With a smooth lake surface they went deeper. I brought my new 6-weight Winston Alpha+ rigged with a Scientific Anglers Sonar line. The line gets me deep but I took it a step further with a 10 foot piece of 0X Fluorocarbon and a Rich Strolis jig fly. But, regardless of all the tools to get deep, and indeed I got deep, after hours of dredging, the biggest walleye I got was this tiny 12 incher.
There are times when you must shift gears. Despite traveling across Wyoming to catch walleyes, the fact that they weren’t eating with this stunningly calm and hot day meant we needed to try something else. Sammy knew some spots that normally hold nice crappie and we agreed it was time to give them a try.
I normally only seek crappie in the evening with poppers. Poppers is a good way to find them however when suspended in deep water they won’t come up. Sammy’s spot would easily be overlooked but when Granny dropped down a small Clouser about 7 feet she quickly came tight.
The four of us would go on to catch 15 beautiful black crappies ranging from 10” to 14”. They were some of the heftiest crappie I can remember catching in my entire life. Honestly, I’m happy the walleye fishing was slow for the fact that if it wasn’t, we never would have crappie fished!
I didn’t exactly teach Sammy how to catch walleye with the fly rod. It was however, a fantastic day in eastern WY. Its time to break out the fillet knife and get to work on these crappie. The good news is that Sammy has tomorrow off so we are going to try another of his favorite walleye lakes – Pathfinder Reservoir. I’ll get another chance to show Sammy walleyes can be taken on fly. And it’s supposed to be windy!
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