Lake Wisconsin – Walleye / crappie

Hit the water today around 1:00 with my good friend Kevin Sime (whiskerkev) looking for some post spawn walleye. The fish are finally starting to make it back from their spawn up river, but I don’t think they are back in full force yet. Our plan for the day was to drag some plastics and drift some crawlers, and if neither of those were putting any fish in the boat, we would switch to trolling.

We started dragging 1/4 oz BFT Draggin jigs tipped with Moxies or ringworms in various colors and were on fish pretty much right out of the gate. Unfortunately, most were small walleye. We made three passes through the area and picked up one keeper, and a handful of short fish. After the third pass we decided to start drifting some crawlers.

Drifting crawlers on draggin jigs seemed to be the ticket for a mixture of fish species. The area we were working is some of the most snag filled water I know, but the draggin jigs just slide right through most everything. Once in a while you get a snag, but if you were using a regular round jig or a precision head, you would be snagged every 20 yards. We caught walleye, smallmouth bass, rock bass, white bass, and crappie. Surprisingly, no sheephead decided to show themselves so we couldn’t complete the 6 species slam. We missed a lot of fish as they were just nipping the ends of the crawlers off. I had a nice solid pickup and set the hook resulting in an immediate short scream of drag. The fish was solid, but was acting rather strange so I said “I think it may be a big bass”. Nothing makes a guy stay away from the net more than the word bass. The fish popped to the surface and much to my surprise was a slob of a walleye. Once Kevin got a look at it, he was quick to the net. The fish turned out to be a VERY healthy 29″ walleye. She spent a few minutes in the livewell to make sure she was good an healthy, but more so I could pull up next to Joel Ballweg and give him a look as he had seen another 29″ fish boated earlier today. After a few pics she swam away so another lucky fisher person can have a crack at her.

Some days, the simplest of presentations can be the ticket. The majority of the fish we caught today came on a BFT draggin jig and half a crawler, dragged along the bottom using the current as our propulsion. It just doesn’t get any easier than that. We caught a pretty fair amount of fish today, and Kevin was able to take home three nice crappie and one walleye. The picture makes them look pretty small, but they were good eating sized fish. Had beautiful weather, good company, and few cooperative fish. Can’t think of a much better way to spend a Saturday afternoon.