Has anyone fished shell lake (near Spooner) for smallmouth? I heard 3rd hand that it had a lot of them and was thinking of giving it a whirl this weekend. From the topo map I looked at from WDNR website seems to be a real lack of open lake structure, probably doesn’t matter much this time of year for bass though. Any info (water temp, clarity etc) appreciated even if you don’t fish it for smallmouth.
Never been on the lake but I’ve read up on it some. The advice of the “experts” was to stay as real as possible with your presentations because the lake is gin clear and the fish are skiddish. Given the probability for shoreline foraging you may be just fine if you have a really good casting outfit and don’t get too close. I’ve seen livebait, longlined, and slowly trolled produce well under these conditions on similar waters so you may consider that as an option. I have nothing else to offer but please, if you get up there, let us know how it goes! I would like to get up there for some fishing myself someday soon and could use the input!
If you decide to chase walleyes at all I know it’s a pretty decent lake for that too and does well with late evening/early darkness hours trolling cranks. Got that tip from an uncle that lived near there some time ago.
I think that lake may hold some very large toothy critters also. Not from experiance just what I heard. A couple more days and I’ll have my boat back,can’t wait. Steve
I just got back from trying it, as advertised there were a lot of smallmouth (I caught around 40 or so)but most were only 10 & 12″ers, out of all those bass only about 6 were in the 14-16″ range, I also caught 2 largemouth, 1 walleye ~17″ but very skinny (FYI stillakid if you’re interested in the walleye it had about 4 insect nymphs of some kind in its throat that it coughed up while I was unhooking) and a few rock bass and hammer handle pike. Water is very clear at least 7-8 ft vis, water temp was 58-61.
Forgot to add, the lake looks to be 2-3 ft. high, a lot of the houses had sandbags stacked in their lawns to keep water out.
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