Red Cedar Lake – Barron County, WI

I had a club tournament 5-28-06 and the smallmouth are definately on the beds. The bait of choice was a 5″ Chomper brown in color on a 1/4 ounce Shaky head style jig fished slowly (dragging through the beds). The largest fish were in 5 to 6 feet of water on flats on the west side of islands or humps. My partner Eric Mattmiller (picture attached) won with a limit of smallmouth just shy of 17 lbs. Nice Job Eric!!
The wind was a steady 15 to 20 mph with gusts up to 30 mph. Sight fishing was non existent after 8:30 am. Both livewells were full of crawfish pinchers. We weighed all smallmouth except for 1 largemouth I caught with 15 minutes left to go.

If you are thinking of getting out smallmouth fishing on these northern Wisconsin lakes, go now!!

Out of curiosity what were the water temps there? I fished both Shell lake and Beaver Dam for smallies this weekend with mixed results for bedding fish.

Fished Beaver Dam Sunday afternoon and found a few bedding fish. Water temps were in the mid to low 60’s. Our biggest fish didn’t come off beds, but on topwaters and hula grubs worked over sharp drops and gravel points.

Monday we hit Shell and found basically the same thing. Some fish were on beds, but not nearly as many as this time last year. I also never personally saw a large female fish on a bed all weekend. Again topwaters and hula grubs on football heads took most of our quality fish on those rock points and sharp drops near large flats.

Warmest water I’ve seen was 66 degrees – all the good fish were on main lake flats where the temp was not that warm.

Fished Red Cedar last Tuesday and the water temp then was in the low 50’s, The heat wave must baked them right into love making mode……..

I’m going to be on Red Ceder the last week in June. Any walleye suggestions?

Thanks,
NIck