Sakakawea - August 9
- brettbloemendaal
- Aug 9
- 2 min read
Every year seems to be a unique beast on Sakakawea, and this August, 2025's story seems to be developing. The first week plus of the month has probably been the best August bite I've ever seen out here, especially on a relatively monthly basis. Again we had a cool summer - and August hasn't been warm either - so it took a while for the bite to get up to its best. In fact, when August started, true water temps (not afternoon surface temps) were still in the upper 60s, now just maybe scratching 70. We had a good July, but you had to move through a lot of fish to get the bites to fill a day. August so far has been nothing like that. Instead of getting one of 50-100 fish on the graph to go, it's more like one of 5-10 or better. So the story for me is seeing August actually be much better than July of the same year.
We've tossed around a lot of theories as to the stinginess of the fish up till now. Cool water seems like a likely candidate now, but we've also seen a bait explosion this season. I've never seen the smelt so thick and expansive on the graph in so many areas of the lake, and that surely makes for a tougher bite most times. That hasn't changed in August, but the bite has, so there must be other factors.
On top of that, so many fish (and bait) are still relatively shallow. There are fish in 25 feet and deeper, but I'm just not going there most days. The strongest pattern has been 15-20 feet on breaklines of structure and shorelines or 12-16 feet on the edges of weedlines (mostly present on the eastern end of the lake). Bottom bouncers have been strongest, but when you get active schools, they still take jigs and crawlers really well too, so there are a lot of fun ways to catch fish right now. And if the pattern holds, we may avoid the super deep bite this year and have a very strong shallow pitching bite in the fall.
In terms of size structure, we have been dealing with a large class of small fish, but they've grown up a little now over the summer from 13-15 inches to seeing more 16-17s many days with several of the 18-22s mixed in. And here in August we've landed more 23+ than any time since back in May and early June.
I'm excited to see what the rest of the year brings, and I still have openings in all months, so if you want to get on what's been the best bite of the year, the time is now!
I haven't had a ton of time for videos lately, but I finished one recently that's super appropriate for the time right now: