Menominee river spring run walleyes

Made the trip to the Menominee river for 2-1/2 days of spring walleye fishing. My main objective on this trip was to spend more time fishing at night and less during the day. I’ve always wondered what the night bite was like and after this past weekend, its sure going to be hard staying off the water after dark.
There are has so many different opportunities for anyone willing to take advantage of them. You can certainly catch fish during the day on the river or you can head out into the bay of Green Bay and have an immense amount of water to explore and troll.
In the past, we generally either jigged or trolled during the day and by evening, after a bite to eat we would be so tired it was basically impossible to stay awake any longer.
Fresh air poisoning as Michael likes to call it would take over and sleep was the only cure until daybreak calls and you go do it all over again.

I had every intention of doing things different this year and to that end, succeeded to a degree but still feel as though fish were left in the river that could and maybe should have been caught and release like many others were.
Since this was going to be a short trip, the boat was left at home and a good pair of waders was brought along instead. After driving for 3-1/2 hrs, stopping by at Greybeards cabin to say hello and drop off my sleeping bag it was off to the river for a night of wading.
The bite was very slow at first and I passed the time by walking the banks of the river looking for the best spot. It was 1:30am before I was able to even get a bite. Fortunately, the bite did get a little better between then and dawn with nine fish coming ashore. Some for a quick photo and all released shortly after being caught.

The odd thing was, it was really hard to get bit on the same bait twice. I usually caught a fish within the first three cast after changing lures and then nothing for a half hour. Change baits and bang! Another fish then nothing again. I caught fish primarily on stick baits and 1/16oz draggin jigs. Plastics that caught fish on the draggin jig were chart/green core moxi’s & ringworms and Fire’N’Ice ringworms.
This was the last time I would pull and all nighter on this excursion. As luck would have it, a seat became available in Michael Collins boat so when he offered, I grabbed the chance to fish with him.
We hit the river around 5:00pm on Saturday afternoon and made one deep water jigging pass before moving shallow. One decent walleye fell for a chartreuse/green core moxi on a 3/16oz precision jig. Nothing else for us in the deep water.
We did okay dragging 1/8oz jigs in 7-10′ of water. Our best bait was a ringworm (green core again) followed by a stick bait which I cast into shallow water while Michael continued to drag. We quit around 9:30pm, even though the fish were still biting. Michael was pretty much shot from spending so many days in a row on the water and was in desperate need of some shut eye. The afternoon/evening produced 13 fish for us with Michael edging me out once again on the total fish count. (Michael 7, me 5)

The following morning we hit it early and spent the morning anchoring and pitching jig/plastics into several spots that looked good. Some spots produced one or two fish and others produced a few more. None of the spots was great but by the end of the morning, we still managed to put 14 fish in the boat. (Michael 8, me 5) One thing I already knew before coming up here, it’s very, very hard to out fish Michael on these waters.
Sunday afternoon was pretty much a repeat of the day before except the fish didn’t cooperate as well. We only managed 6 fish in total with each of catching three.
Monday morning I took the opportunity to jump aboard Kevin Withy’s boat who arrived at Greybeards cabin the day before. It was fun sharing stories and fishing with Kevin. We managed six fish, none of which was anything special but fun none the less.
Already I’m looking forward to next year and wishing I had more days to spend fishing the Menominee river and the bay both but that’s all going to have to wait till next year.
To Michael Collins: Thanks so much for inviting me to your cabin, your hospitality and for sharing your open boat seat.
Thank you also to Kevin for allowing me to fish from your boat as well.
I hope to be able to repay you both in kind sometime in the near future.