Thanks for the response. I just hope the weather holds out next week and we can catch some eaters, not looking for trophys just some for a fish fry for the family when we get home.

Just got back from 3 1/2 days on lake Pepin. Nice boating but no fish to speak of. I never saw any gull activity except for the get up and fly around type. Really disappointing. I would like to come back in a couple of weeks but don’t know if the 8 hour drive is worth it this year . Please someone let us know if things pick up in the white bass fishing.

I was wondering the same thing. We are coming up on Wed and really would like to have some fun with the white bass. It has been a long time since they really went crazy.

Is it possible that grocery stores are now carrying white bass on the fish counters. Maybe people realize that they taste pretty good and are keeping more of them. I also didn’t know that they are commercially fished, does that have any bearing on reduced numbers that I have seen over the past 5 or so years?

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I’ve been trying to figure out why they don’t run like they used to for a while now also. One theory is that there seems to be more fishing pressure and so many people just troll over the top of them instead of staying outside of the school and casting in. In my opinion this breaks up the schools and drives them deeper. I think the fish have gotten conditioned to this and most of the time are feeding deeper. Even though the surface action and gull runs are shorter, the school is still sitting right there and still in a feeding frenzy. There just under the surface. I almost like this better because you still get the one fish every cast without a bunch of people running up ontop of you at 90 mph.
Also, there might not be as many as there used to be but they are a lot bigger and there definitely is not a shortage of these fish in the system. I go for one weekend a year around Labor day and it’s pretty easy to catch a limit.

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I think the key word here is LIMIT. There are a lot of people out there that don’t bother to count them or know that there is a limit and just keep throwing them in the cooler. Maybe a little common sense would help. I will be there later this week and when I reach my limit, I go after other species and thank God that I have been lucky.

Thanks for the responses. With all of the negative posts on fishing I was just wondering if anything was biting.

She wouldn’t mind at all, except she’s not good at backing even without a boat on and she just had a knee replacement which would kind’a make it hard.

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I’ve heard they are pretty tasty smoked and also heard you don’t need to take out the vain if smoking them. Has anyone tried them smoked like that?

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I have tried to smoke them but they are really hard to light

I pretty much agree on too much information about spots, colors, speed, presentation et al. But I want to say that i have been fishing for about 60 years and the first 40 or so I just did the same thing whenever or wherever I fished. IDO has taught me so much about fishing I can’t even begin to thank all of the posters. I don’t need to know the “sopts” or any of the other stuff because everything changes every day. What I do appreciate is talk about techniques. That has broadened my fishing experience greatly and I thank you all.

I have heard that the White Bass go nuts when the shad spawn or just after. Anyone know when that spawn happens?

I waa up there about two weeks ago and had a really hard time finding them. Only saw the gulls diving one day down by the end of the lake. The rest of the time we fished the whole lake from top to bottom and both sides and didn’t have much success at all. What I did see was people anchored on the break lines catching a TON of bluegills. In all my years of fishing Pepin I have never seen so many gills caught by so many people in so many different places.
Since that was two weeks ago i don’t know if it applies to right now. Good luck anyway, hope you find some.

Where did you find the white bass?? i fished from Tues thru Sunday and only saw one group of gulls diving on one day. The other days it was nothing at all. Fished from Lacoupolis up to Maiden rock on both sides of the lake. Nuttin!
I was amazed to see boat after boat catching bluegills one after another all over the place.
We did catch a ton of small northerns and the usual bunch of small saugers.
Not a bad trip but when you are targeting white bass it gets frusterating.
Can’t beat the weather though, just beautiful all week.

Don’t get out on Lake Michigan, it scares me. I have been on a couple of charters and it was fun but missing something. Like deep sea fishing, not for me.

I do live vicariously through you and others. I used to come up (from Chicago burbs) 5 or 6 times a year, but with the price of gas and getting old we only get up there two times a year.

Thanks again. I’ll keep that in mind. I don’t like to keep anything on the small side especially northerns.

Many thanks for the video. It looks a lot easier than I thought. Now I probably won’t catch any more but I will have the video locked into my aging memory for the next time. Thanks again!

Well said. Common sense should always trump macho.

My wife and I fish the Wolf a couple of times a year and it can be fantastic. In spring if you hit it right the Eyes are going one way and the white bass are going the other. One weird factoid is that there is no length limit on Eyes and Sauger are catch and release only. I personally have never caught a sauger there and have seen guides cleaning 8″ Eyes, which is disturbing at best.

Thanks Dean. We probably had the worst fishing trip in the past 25 years . NO ONE was catching anything and with the winds we got off the lake and went to the “Y”. How’s is that for a poor fishing trip? We did catch some on our half day of fishing on Tuesday, and it went downhill from there. I guess I will have to try the river one of these days and swallow my pride . I guess it is like the Chicago Cubs, I will wait ’til next year.

Thanks for the info. If it comes from a church member it has to be true. I am looking forward to being there next week.

Thanks. At least I know that they are still doing their thing.

I’ve had Optima (lasted only a year), Walmart (lated two years) and now Interstate which are still go0ing strong after three years I guess that I will stick with the Interstates.

Thanks,
I was must curious about a flashback I had of good times in the 60’s.
ray

The Mississippi is considered boundry waters and both MN and WI licenses are OK. You have to use the one where you are staying, or live, and abide by those reles. Don’t know how that works if one of you lives in WI and the other in MN. Could get real complicated for the DNR guys.

Unfortunately they didn’t bite the first week of June for us.

Thanks for the info Jason, I guess i can’t figure anything out this year. We were up there the first week of June looking for eyes and all we could find were 14″ ones. I guess I’ll be like the Chicago Cubs and “wait ’til next year”.

We usually fish the whole lake from top to bottom. I don’t mind catching white bass either, but prefer walleyes. Thanks

It was great. How did we fish? I’m trying to put it in words, we had six poles with line counters and a green winged thing above the lure that took the lure down. The lure that looked like the old flatfish. He tied a piece of “meat” to the bottom of the lure and then we let out the line. I am assuming that the lure was on the bottom of the river. Then he fired up his T-8 and kept us basically standing still in the current. We just waited for the fish to take the lure and then set the hook and the fun began. The fish we caught were Chinook, not really huge but for my sister and neice who haven’t caught anything larger than a bluegill it weas a lot of fun.

I love the taildancer. It seems to work very well on the Wolf River in WI for walleye, and I have used the larger ones on pool 4 with pretty good luck. I only fish a few times a year, but the shad color is my go-to lure most of the time.

Thanks for the info. I can’t wait for the trip even though I have to spend time “chatting” with my family during our trip.