Fishing   Lake Frances

About Dale Gilbert

Dale does primarily walleye fishing, and does a lot of it. He is a five time PWT/RCL Championship Qualifier, 2 time Montana Walleye Circuit Angler of the Year and 2 time Montana Walleye Circuit Team of the Year. Dale has multiple Montana Walleye Circuit tournament wins. He offers “On-the-Water” seminars / guide trips to help you learn how to find and catch fish. One of three members of Team Walleye.

Fishing report for Lake Frances

Report provided by Dale Gilbert

July 5, 2011

Lake Frances is full. Lots of flooded vegetation and cover for baitfish, walleyes and northerns. The water temperatures were 67-70 degrees and water clarity is excellent. On Tuesday, it was a great day to be out - with temperatures up to about 80 degrees and literally NO wind - kind of strange for this place. Ordinarily, I would expect to find some shallow fish relating to the weeds and flooded vegetation, but I couldn't during the day - probably to flat and calm. This is probably worth checking early morning or late evening. However, we did catch some nice fish - 19-22" out in the deeper water trolling crankbaits with leadcore. Also caught several really nice perch up to about a pound and several northerns up to about 3 pounds. The system is absolutely full of forage, the fish are in excellent condition and it probably makes the bite a little tougher because those fish have so much to eat, they can be pretty picky about what and when they want to eat.

July 2, 2011

Saturday was a beautiful day on the water but the fishing was pretty slow. I did see a few walleye that were caught - most out fairly deep 30+ foot. The lake is the highest I have ever seen it with LOTS of flooded vegetation. The fish that are being caught are really nice fish and they are in great shape. I did hear of a 27" fish that was caught on Friday, and a 26" fish on Saturday. Hopefully, they were released since those are some of the prime spawners. Overall, this system has some quality fish. Fishing can be a little tough, because they have so much forage/food available to them, along with a lot of cover. Jigs and gulp have been working as well as leadcore trolling with crankbaits. Fishing with live bait like crawlers or leeches can be fun but frustrating because of the competition from the small perch in the system. We also caught several small northerns on the crankbaits - there are lots of northerns in the system.