T minus 27:30……..

The Opener is almost upon us!!!! My plan is to hit Tainter in the morning & then Menomin in the afternoon. If you see a green Tuffy, stop & say hi. Good luck to all!

Probly hittin the small lakes around here. Might give Elk Creek Lake a try.

Good luck all!

Looks like the weather is going to bite. I am actually glad that I will not be openning in WI this year. I will be fishing WI by the end of the week when it is warm.

Probably going to hit a local (somerset area) lake tomorrow, but I’m going to Wapo on Sunday. Good luck to everyone! Be safe! I’ll be in the green and white Ranger with the 150 johnson. I’ll have snacks and beer! Feel free to stop by!!!

Can’t wait to start the season tomorrow. Prefishing shell and mudhen on Sat and Sunday, respectively.

It’s been way too long of a winter.

eager to hear your report, especially the Tainter part!

Wish I had a better report for you. We started on Tainter & put our first ‘eye in the boat in less than five minutes! It was short, however. That was what we ran into most of the morning, short ‘eyes. There were four of us fishing from 2 boats. The other boat did get one 17″. Trolling was putting most of the fish in the boat including the one legal and a 24″ pike. Jigging also caught some small ‘eyes. Switched up & went to Menomin. Never boated a walleye. Caught a couple pike. Went up the river to try & find some bass. Lost a couple good fish up, but no idea what they were. Had a good time though. This was the first opener I shared with my son. He likes to fish, but usually waits for the weather to get a little better & I think it’s better with a young angler not to get to gung-ho, do things on their terms. This year though, he was really fired up to fish on the opener. I usually fish Tainter & Menomin on the opener and couldn’t believe the number of boats out there enjoying the day. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like there were more people out this year. With all those boats on the water, somebody had be on fish. Hopefully they will report better luck than we had!

where do you fish on tainter? if you don’t want to reveal your spots i understand. you prefer upper or lower tainter?

I don’t have a lot of time to post right now, but I can get back to you & give you some ideas.

Went to Pine lake just north of Somerset in the am, and were looking for some bass. Got skunked. My some was able to bring in a few little crappies, but we didn’t fare too well. We hit Bass Lake for a few hours in the afternoon, and didn’t get anything. Like Coot, we had my 8 year old son in the boat both times, and we didn’t want to burn him out. SInce it had been slow on Saturday, we decided to take advantage of the nice weather on Sunday and did some spirng cleaning. At least that way I didn’t need to worry about how many I had…

mikeyj – here’s some ideas for Tainter. Both upper & lower can be good and a lot of what I am going to post can be applied to both lakes. In my opinion, a person needs to stay mobile on these lakes. There are a lot of spots that hold fish and a person just needs to keep moving until they locate some active ones. My experience on this lakes also has shown me that you rarely get on one spot & really pound the ‘eyes. Although that scenario does happen occassionally, typically you get a few fish off one spot & then it is time to move on. However, don’t be afraid to come back to that spot a few hours later. A couple keys to finding ‘eyes out there are structure & snags (cover). If you can find them in combination even better! Plan on losing some baits when you fish Tainter. I always say “If you aren’t losing baits on Tainter, you aren’t catching fish!” A good place to start out there is points. There are quite a few points, but the better ones have the steeper breaks. The lake also has quite a few humps that hold fish. Look for the ones with good breaks, snags, or some kind of change in bottom composition. Also fishing the channel breaks in the old river channel can produce some fish. Hope this helps to kind of point you in the right direction. These are just some suggestions from my experiences on the lake. I’m sure there are other people out there that fish Tainter differently and do well on the ‘eyes. Let us know how you do if you try Tainter!

hey coot,
thanks for the info. i will for sure fish tainter because we have a family cabin on lower tainter. go up there quite a few times a year. this trip i will mainly concentrate on getting a turkey, but fishing will be done after hunting. who knows, if i bag my bird the first day ill have a good amount of time for fishing. the humps and points are great producers of walleyes. if you use live bait it’s hard to get around all the rockbass/dink smallmouth but there are some monster fish in that lake. maybe we’ll see each other on the water next week. once again thanks for the report and tips.