Lake Menomin fishing

The jig bite continues to improve. Hair jigs and Fuzzy Grubs tipped with fats has been the best. Look for active fish in 6 to 13 ft of water.
Schmidy has good quality fats down at the bait shop.

Hi Don, looks like Menomin has been producing some nice fish for you. Are you focusing on the upper end of the lake where the river comes in, or are you picking up fish throughout? I was thinking about hitting Menomin tomorrow, as Wissota has slowed down considerably for me in the past week, although the weather probably had a lot to do with that. Maybe I’ll see you out there.

Jason, spending all my time on lake yet. The best producing areas are breaks or drops off the old river channel. Big fats on hair jigs has been the best producer.

Sounds like that lake has been pretty hot for you lately as you have everything dialed right in for the eyes. Thanks for the report. Thanks, Bill

Jason, did you get out on the lake Monday?

Don: I didn’t. Instead, I let my buddy talk me into going back to Wissota. My last time out there last week, my best bite was on chunky chunky smallies that were tight to shore. My buddy is a bass guy, and he wanted a crack at those guys. Well, to make a long story short, we didn’t land one bass, and only put hooks into one genuine smallie all afternoon.

Instead, we settled for the Wissota standard 11-12″ walleyes. Lots and lots of them, 22-26 FOW on jig/minnow. There must be a gazillion of those little cigars in that body of water. Do you have any ideas about where the big girls go? Clear up to Jim Falls perhaps? I ran up there last week but ran out of guts when I started reading 4 FOW, one or two bends below the dam. Didn’t want to lose my lower unit with nobody else around, so I went back to the lake and hit the cigars again.

Anyway, I’m headed up to Mille Lacs tomorrow to chase some non-cigars with Mr. Holst, and then we’re going to our family place by Hayward for the weekend. Should have a chance to go for eyes on Lost Land and Teal lakes this weekend. I have 2 more weeks before I go back to work, and I plan to hit Menomin next week, and forget about Wissota until first ice. Good luck out there! -Jason

Jason, DNR surveys done on the local lakes here show that the majority of big fish in the system stay in the river. I would look at areas that are close to deep water. Bigger fish are loners and don’t gather in big schools like the dinks do. When you locate smaller fish try switching baits, if you are hammering dinks on minnows switch to plastic.
Another thing that has been successful for me is to move off the area that is holding the smaller fish. For example you were getting the smaller fish in 22-26ft, try moving to a shallow flat close by.
Check out my article about fall trophies on small water. Good luck, Don.

Jason know what you mean about the cigars. I was out the other day and ended up catching a bunch of them. I tried the river and caugh 4 nice ones 20″-23″. I got those on those power bait leaches and ringworms. We didn’t have much luck on live bait. We did find that most of the fish on the Lake were in the river or on the flats just outside of the river in shallower water 10′ or less. I havn’t made it to the lakes near Menomonie. I haven’t had much time with bow season and all. I’m hoping after my vacation time next week I can put the bow away and fish….We’ll see how that goes.