Things are still going gangbusters on Lake Wissota for a mixed bag of smallies, walleyes and crappies. I was able to sneak away for a quick trip this afternoon, and I found fish both by pulling cranks and by pitching live bait.
Part of my excuse for getting out today was to try to find some new (to me) territory. My strategy was to pull cranks in the river far above the lake (FAR above the lake) until I contacted some active fish. I was able to dial in one nice pattern for both smallies and slot eyes by pulling jointed red craw SR5s upstream (1.5 GPS) in 10-12 fow with areas of deeper water (15 fow or more) nearby. In the part of the river I was fishing, 15 fow is pretty scarce…I kept working and reworking relatively small areas, and the fish cooperated so well that I could only fish one line (where normally I would be working a spread of 2 or 3).
After a fish or two, it became apparent that these guys were targetting crayfish in the rocks. This picture shows one of the puked up crawdaddies alongside the guy that was hoping to digest him. By the end of a couple of hours, there were crawdaddy legs and tails all over the work area of my rig.
