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By Joe Knight
Leader-Telegram staff
CHIPPEWA FALLS – In the dark you could hear fish splashing and slurping. Sometimes you could see a fish swirl close to the boat.Overcast skies prevented any moonlight from showing through.
Windows on riverside homes and cabins showed as points of yellow light.
This reminded me of fly fishing for trout during the Hex hatch, an oversized yellow mayfly that hatches after dark on slow Midwestern trout streams.
But we weren’t on a trout stream. We were on the Chippewa River above Lake Wissota, and the fish jumping weren’t trout. They weren’t bass either. They were, according to Mark Brann, walleyes. Or catfish. Possibly even muskies.
They were chasing emerald shiners in shallow water at the surface, he said.
At first I thought at least some of them were feeding on mayflies. A hatch of yellow mayflies on the river was going strong when we launched the boat around 8 p.m.
Brann predicted the nighthawks and bats would be interested in the mayflies. The fish would want a nice, oily minnow.
The mayflies petered out at dark. They weren’t on the water anymore, but the darker it got the more the fish splashed.
Brann said a few years ago he was about to quit fishing after an evening of trolling for walleyes when he heard fish jumping in shallow water.
It was a sound he’d heard before, but this time he decided to try to catch one. He anchored in shallow water and began casting and retrieving a floating crankbait at the surface. He hooked a fish and was surprised to see it was a walleye.
The key is to have schools of emerald shiners move into the shallows after dark. That usually happens in early June, although the cool spring may be delaying things this year, he said.
By 8 p.m. most of the boat traffic already was off the lake, but there was one other night owl – Rich Mueller of Eau Claire, one of Braun’s frequent fishing companions.
We started out motor trolling in a drizzle. The walleyes didn’t mind the rain, and soon Brann had a 17-inch walleye. He later had one just over 15 inches, and I had one just over 15 inches.
On most Wisconsin lakes that would be three legal fish. The statewide minimum is 15 inches.
But they weren’t legal on Wissota, where walleyes between 14 and 18 inches are in a protected slot and must be returned. You can keep one over 18 inches.
The bag limit is three because of tribal fishing quotas. It was two until Memorial Day weekend.
The next fish Brann caught was 13.5 inches, a legal fish, although considerably less plump than the fish we had released.
Trolling was working pretty well, but Brann parked us in a shallow area while there still was enough light to see what we were doing.
I tossed out a hefty anchor, and we switched to crankbaits designed to float or wiggle just under the surface.
Just after we anchored, Brann was poking in the cooler for a bottle of water when he hooked a fish by accident. He had set his rod down, and the river current made the crankbait wobble enough to attract a walleye.
It was a nice, plump walleye. It also was in the slot size.
About the time it was dark enough for the tree frogs to start singing. We began hearing the kersplash of feeding fish.
We cast toward the splashes but had no takes, although sometimes a bat would fly into the line, which felt like the tug of a fish.
There are nights when the shiners are so abundant that your lures can’t compete with natural food, Brann said. This might have been one of those nights.
After about a half-hour of casting, I heard a splash in the vicinity of my lure. I felt the welcome pull of a fish when I set the hook. It was a 15-inch walleye.
Brann soon hooked something that he had trouble reeling in against the current, so we pulled up anchor and drifted after it.
He thought it was a catfish, but it turned out to be a 17-inch walleye he’d snagged in the middle that felt bigger than it was. The fish probably had taken a swipe at the crankbait.
We quit at 10:30 p.m. We only had two 13-inch walleyes in the cooler, but it had been an interesting evening out there with the frogs and bats.
At the boat landing we met Mueller, who had caught only two fish, but they filled up much of his cooler – a channel catfish and a flathead catfish.
It’s surprising what will take a floating crankbait after dark.
June 8, 2009 at 8:38 am
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