Welcome fall to Lake Wissota

With the bright lights and the reporters now long gone, and Kirt picking out the colors for his new boat, it’s time to get back to just plain fishing on the backyard gem.

As the waters cool, Wissota will once again turn into a fantaastic place to stretch a line this fall. Walleyes will continue to feed, crappies will continue to bunch up and become easy targets, and the biggest smallies of the year will start to find their way to boats for brief visits.

This afternoon’s surface temp was a satisfying 67….down as much as 10-12 degrees from about 10 days ago when we were locked under cloudless skies and air temps in the 80s. I only had about 90 minutes to buzz around the gem, and found a handful of standard Wissota walleyes and this very nice, 3 lb 8 oz smallmouth bass to be willing guests in my boat for a brief time.

I’m anxious to spend some time targeting crappies this fall, after finding some nice concentrations of them with my Humminbird 997 Side Imaging sonar unit while under the bright lights of the tournament. A couple of nicer specks that found my boat during game day are shown in the second photo. Who wouldn’t want to catch a bunch of 11-13″ crappies within 20 minutes of their front door?

So, get out and reacquaint yourself with the backyard gem. The boats are gone, the pressure’s off, and it’s time to fish once again.

Thanks for the update Jason, Great looking fish! I was excited to see that surface temp on Menomin down below 70 as well

Nice job on the slabs

Love that color in that smallie!

The very dark colors and cool patterns of stripes, spots and swirls make Wissota smallies just plain beautiful. Here’s another of the same fish, showing off those fall colors again.

Hey Jason… haven’t been to Wissota since opener but managed to get out for few hours Sunday morning. Felt great to be out on Wissota! We fished for a couple of hours and boated 8 nice walleye (nothing over the slot) until the darn winds drove us back to the Gun Club…

Michigan is nice but I sure miss those western WI walleye waters!

Nice Photos Jason! Those look like Chippewa Rivers pan fryers to me. I put some time on the water Tuesday in search of a hot hole. The best I could come up with was a number of fish hanging out in the river channel about 10-15 feet off the bottom in 30+ FOW. Fish were holding by the numbers and did not seem to like anything moving to fast. Once I slowed down our presentation I was able to find a few takers. Water temp held all day at 63. It is just about go time out there. Everything should be good and fired up by next week. Bring on the frost.

What a great day on the water. Water temps fell to 55 this weekend. Walleyes are hot! We picked up numbers of little ones today focusing on a steep edge that dropped from 4ft down to 40ft right now. This was the first brake from shore. Most of our catch came from 25-33FOW slow pulling fatheads on lindys. The fish would not take the lindy if you were moving. We had to drag and pause for about 5 second before they would react to the bait. We moved slow through the area with the trolling motor on one. Lift, drop, pause, Bang! Until my wife called!