The walleye were on an absolute frenzy on Friday. I hit the water early as it was my last chance to take a day off work for a while so I seized the opportunity. Started out trolling #5 shad raps on two rods, just longlining them. Hooked up on one rod in the first 20 yards and the second rod while landing the first fish. On my first pass, I boated 5 walleye. They were all smaller fish, but the fish were stacked in there like chord wood. I kept working about a 150 yard stretch that the side scan showed holding a lot of fish and I was landing fish as fast as I could deploy baits. I kept at it for a about 2 hours until the number of boats that slid in on me and anchored or started drifting pushed me out. I ended up boating about 20 short walleye and 3 keepers before giving up on trolling.
I switched over to drifting crawlers. On one rod I was running a gold BFT dragging jig in 1/4 oz and on my deadstick rod I was running a lindy rig with a no snag sinker and a green float. Each rig got a half crawler. The action was a touch slower than trolling, but I attribute that to the fact that I was covering water at a much slower pace. Though the bites came a bit slower, they were still consistent, and the number of good fish increased a lot. Over the course of the next 5 hours, I managed to boat another 15 keepers sized (15 to 20 inches) and 6 fish in the protected slot of 20 to 28 inches. Biggest fish was 26.5 inches. I also caught lots of short fish. A conservative estimate is probably 30 to 40 additional to the trolling fish. If I had to guess, I would say I averaged 5 fish per drift. I did not have a single drift without catching a fish, and I missed more than my share of bites as well. The most surprising thing was that I did not catch a single sheephead, and have not caught one so far this year. Normally this time of year in this spot, you catch a fair amount of them.
I did not take any pictures, which I normally don’t do, but the catching was taking up all my time. My final total of 18 keepers and 6 slot fish is a personal record for Lake Wisconsin for me. I don’t believe I’ve ever experience as hot a bite as I had on Friday. I kept 3 fish in the 17 inch range for a nice Friday night fish fry for my wife and I rather than going out for fish. I quit at 3:30, and believe had I stayed until dark, I would have kept catching fish.
I was out again this morning but the water temp dropped 9 degrees since Friday and the wind was blowing through that spot so hard you couldn’t really fish it effectively. I still put some fish in the boat, but it was a real challenge.
