Lake Winnie — Forty-Five Minutes at Little Stony, and the DNR Looks Inside the Bellies

My grandma ran her kitchen like a lighthouse. Lunch was ready at one exact minute, and if you showed up at twelve-oh-six you got a look and a cold pickle. Winnie’s walleyes are running that kitchen right now. Jeff Sundin’s Oct. 12 post on Fishrapper is mostly about the clock, and it also brings in something our last Winnie card was waiting on: what the DNR found when it checked what those fish had been eating.

The short version

• The fish are eating. The problem is timing. Sundin says walleyes are feeding hard ahead of winter and sitting in the usual fall places. He thinks the “tough bite” is a timing problem, not a hunger problem.
• One named spot, one short window. On his latest Winnie trip the fish turned on for about 45 minutes over the big south-shore weed flat off Little Stony Point.
• The DNR backed up the perch idea. Stomach checks found the walleyes and pike packed with young-of-year perch, and both species came out in better condition.

How the morning went

Sundin’s latest Winnie trip (he doesn’t give the date) began the way a lot of this fall’s trips have. He hopped between spots hunting for a school that was actually eating. The boat got a few bites, had a few fish come off, and put back a pair of protected-slot walleyes. At noon the livewell was still empty.

So he kept heading farther from the ramp and ended up at the big weed flat off Little Stony Point, down on Winnie’s south shore. Eight or ten boats were already circling out there, all waiting for the same thing. He tried different angles, different depths, and a couple of different presentations. The fish showed up on the screen and wouldn’t bite.

Then they did, with no obvious reason. For roughly three-quarters of an hour his boat picked up walleyes, a few pike, and some decent perch. One client kept a walleye over the slot that was fat from feeding on the flat. Sundin says the boats around them were catching fish too. Then it shut off. He gave it another half hour or so, got one more pike, and called it.

I’ve had this exact morning, except I quit at 11:50 to eat a gas station sandwich, and I’m pretty sure the fish watched me leave.

What the DNR found

This is the new part. After his Oct. 9 post (our bait clouds card), Sundin heard from Dan Schermerhorn, who runs fisheries work on Winnie as the DNR’s large lake specialist. Here’s what Sundin passed along:

• Stomachs: among test-netted walleyes and pike, every one that had food in it was “absolutely packed with young-of-year perch.” Schermerhorn takes that to mean this year’s perch hatch was a big one.
• Condition: relative condition went up for both walleyes and pike. In plain terms, the fish are fatter.
• Year classes: there’s no big walleye year class from 2024 or 2025. Most of the walleyes people are catching were hatched in 2023 and 2019. That’s a small correction to how we put it Friday, when we were going off Sundin’s mention of 2018 and 2019.
• The 2026 hatch: electrofishing and seining turned up some walleyes born this year, in a wide range of sizes. Some probably won’t be big enough to make it to spring, and a few are pretty big. The hope is that enough of the big ones make it to give a moderate 2026 year class. That’s a hope, not a forecast.

On Friday, a strong perch spawn was one of several guesses about why there’s so much bait in the lake. Now there’s survey data supporting it. We still wouldn’t call it the full explanation, but it’s no longer a guess.

What to do with it

• Plan around windows, not a full day of steady action. If the fish feed in short bursts, being patient at a good spot can matter as much as running around.
• Weedy flats with food on them deserve a look. Little Stony’s big flat is the one spot Sundin named this time. Our Oct. 6 card also had eelgrass tops in the mix.
• No new bait call this week. The post doesn’t say what the fish took during the window, so the crawler and float notes from Friday’s card are still the latest we have.
• Slot fish go back. Sundin’s boat put some back. Handle them gently and get them back in the water fast.

A side note on Cut Foot

Sundin heard from friends who were out Sunday that it was a good walleye day, and he was heading to Cut Foot Sioux for a couple of days of charters. That’s all he said, so we don’t have depths or details. He has trips through the 22nd, so more reports should be coming.

The kind part

Resort season is basically over and the ramps are quiet. Sundin still asks anyone going out to send in a line or two on how warm and clear the water is and what the weeds look like. Nobody has to give up a spot. It’s a small, generous thing to ask for, and that’s how you get through a stubborn fall: people sharing what they know.

Fine print

This card is built on one guide’s trip, with no date, depth, temperature, or lure given for the Winnie part, plus DNR survey findings as Sundin quoted them. The 58 degrees in the same post is from a small crappie lake, not Winnie, so we left it out. We added no counts or sizes. Confirm current MN DNR regs before harvest.

Sources

• October 12, 2026 entry, Jeff Sundin / Fishrapper (Early Bird Fishing Guide), including the MN DNR large lake specialist’s notes as quoted there
• Prior cards: Lake Winnie — Bait Clouds, Full Bellies, and the Worm Gets Its Job Back, Lake Winnie — Location Beats the Thermometer