Hayward area lakes for opener?

Fished LCO the last couple years and its so deep and big that the water just isn’t warm enough ever on opener.

Would be greatful if anyone could give me some pointers

A nice little lake up there is Callahan Lake. It is really good for panfish and largemouth. You can always find a few dandy northerns and musky too. Nelson and Lost Lake are other good ones too.

You’ll do better on smaller, darker lakes than LCO. Teal, Lost Land, and Moose are decent choices. I even like parts of Namekagon; big water, but stained and some good shallow parts that warm quickly. LCO and Grindstone turn on sometime in June, once the water warms and the weeds get going.

The Chip Flowage is a reliable opener lake. Definitely seek out darker water than LCO. Flowages are always a good bet and you can usually find fish around the river mouths or in the rivers themselves.

I would also suggest LL, Teal and Moose. Smaller and have some good structure. Should have some emergent weeds (hopefully) to fish around.

well we did ok on Sat. 5 of us bagged 17eyes a bonus smallie and some crappies to boot. Had the majority of them by 9am

fished a smaller shallower lake outside of hayward.
water temps were still fairly cold with 54 being the warmest on this particluar body of water.

fished yellow on sunday and pulled in only 2 snakes.
by the sound of things this was par for the course.

saw there was a bass tournemant on yellow. that couldn’t have helped much with all the commotion, I heard there were over a 100 boats on the lake this weekend.

well thats all I have later

Bucky12pt,
Did you say you fished the Yellow on the 5th? If not, what lake did you hit? I have some land on Nelson, but the walleye productivity has dramatically been reduced in the last several years.

On the 5th I was up in the Hayward area, on the 6th I hit yellow on the way home.