DEVILS LAKE - What do you do when the weather turns … well … devilish on the day you're supposed to fish one of the state's premier fishing destinations?

Go out anyway, catch some fish and have some fun.

It's not like professional walleye angler and Devils Lake fishing guide Johnnie Candle didn't try to reschedule this outing that we had set up in March. It's just that I didn't get either message until I after had settled into a Devils Lake motel room.

"We'll give it a try," he said on the phone Friday night, sounding dubious about our chances the next morning.

The weather seemed even worse Saturday when we met at the motel: 37 degrees, wind chill of 27, a northeast wind blowing more than 20 mph and even higher gusts. The good news was that the chance of thunderstorms had vanished from the forecast.

For me, it seemed like another classic case of "you should have been here yesterday."

Friday, or "yesterday" was when Candle and his two-angler party got into walleyes, white bass and the inevitable northern pike.

"The rods bent a lot," he said.

But now the wind was up and the temperature was down, and Plan A for this Saturday that didn't offer all kinds of options was to troll the "golden highway," the submerged road that once connected Grahams Island and Minnewaukan before Devils Lake made its dramatic rise.

"It's five miles of beautiful man-made reef," Candle explained. "You don't have to worry about feeling the bite. Just put the rods in the holders and drive."

Plenty of other anglers were on the water that morning, despite the conditions. We passed many boats tied up to the trees on the protected side of Grahams Island on our way to pull crankbaits.

But that 20-plus mph crosswind and those stronger gusts blew Plan A off course.

"We'll drift on the protected side of Grahams Island and toss cranks," Candle said.

Devils Lake's good-bad weather cycles so far this year have left many anglers, including Candle, scratching their heads while they try to figure out the walleyes.

"There haven't been enough good days to know that the mother lode of walleyes is on such-and-such a rock pile out there," he said.

Devils Lake walleyes are barely into their post-spawn phase, and they haven't had time to establish patterns yet.

"A month from now, the fish will tell you what to do," Candle explained.

When Plan B didn't produce, Candle hauled out Plan C: joining those anglers nestled beside the dead, partly submerged trees rising out of the lake bottom.

Candle steered through a tangle of dead limbs and trunks to a spot he liked and wrapped a line around a tree on the port side and another tree on the starboard side of his Crestliner. With bobbers rigged, he hauled the leech bag out of the livewell and stuck leeches on three various colored jigs and on one red hook.

It didn't take long for the first bobber to go down. Candle plucked the rod out of the rod holder, paused, raised the rod tip to set the hook and missed.

"When you miss a bite, it's usually the kind of fish you want to catch," he said.

He nailed his next fish, reeling in a protesting northern pike that quickly went back into the water.

As the action slowed, Candle moved the boat over a few tree trunks, within casting distance of Corey Heiser, a friend who guides part time on Devils Lake.

Heiser and party were hauling in another walleye.

While Candle and Heiser were confirming that everyone was using black leeches and jigs, one of our bobbers disappeared and the rod tip started dancing.

Up came a nice, eating-sized walleye - our first.

As our action slowed to a few more northerns, Heiser's group landed another walleye.

Candle moved again, following Heiser's directions to a stump a short cast away from his boat.

"These fish are more like deer moving through the forest," Candle said. "You catch a fish and wait hours for another one."

Up came another eating-sized walleye.

Candle has been guiding on Devils Lake for seven years and has been fishing on the Professional Walleye Trail circuit even longer, according to his Web site, www.johnniecandle.com. He's in his 12th year of doing "Pro's Pointers" on the 6 p.m Tuesday newscasts on KFYR-TV and other NBC North Dakota stations.

As smallish northerns continued to hit the black leeches suspended under our bobbers, Heiser's group kept pulling in walleyes.

"How many is that now? Nine or 10?" he asked as he shook his head.

"It has to be something different on the bottom. The rocks are bigger or smaller. Or there's sand or no sand or … ," Candle said.

By early afternoon, the sun was peeking through the clouds, and the day was warming up.

Our third walleye was our biggest, a 19-incher that pushed the upper limits of Candle's preferred eating-sized scale of 14 to 20 inches.

Meanwhile, Heiser and his party were landing their 10th or 11th walleye.

As the sun broke out, they pulled off their spot, and Candle cast a bobber into their wake as they were moving away. The yellow-and-orange, foam bobber merrily rose or fell on the lake's surface but never went under.

After reeling in a few more pike, we called it a day with close to a dozen fish total, counting those northern pike that we didn't keep.

It wasn't as bad of a day as it could have been. The only precipitation came from Candle's runs on the choppy water from and to the boat ramp. Being out of the wind on the sheltered side of Grahams Island negated the wind and its chill.

On Monday, Candle delayed his Monday morning fishing outing because of the forecast of severe weather.

He got his two-angler party out in the afternoon after the sun came out, the wind calmed down and the temperature hit 75 degrees.

"The conditions became perfect," he wrote in an e-mail Monday night. "We caught 11 walleyes to keep eight. We released one 27-incher that weighed 7.1 pounds on my digital scale. The others were too small. The keepers were all between 15 and 19 inches.

"We also caught over 30 white bass. The biggest one was 2.8 pounds on the same scale."

Forget being there yesterday. I should have been two days late.

(Reach outdoor writer Richard Hinton at 701-250-8256 or richard.hinton@bismarcktribune.com.)