Fox River Walleyes – De Pere, WI

Why would someone get up at 2:00 a.m., drive across the state of Wisconsin, spend several hours on the water, and then drive home again? Answer – the chance to put a pig walleye in the boat and cure a bad case of cabin fever! When my good friend John Schneider extended an invitation to fish the Fox River with him, I jumped at the chance. Even though I didn’t have a lot free time, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to fish this river, which is so famous for turning out springtime hogs.

The Green Bay area is one of my favorite places to fish. However, this was only my second time that I was able to fish the spring run on the Fox River. Fishing buddy, Steve Bird, was also crazy enough to make this early morning run to the Fox with me. This was Steve’s first experience on this river. John had already been on the Fox quite a few times this spring and knows the river very well. There were two patterns that John that had been fishing this spring. One was vertical jigging the deep hole downstream from the dam and the river channel. This pattern was putting high numbers of smaller fish, with an occasional good one in the boat. The other pattern was casting and dragging jigs on the shallow flats adjacent to main channel. Fishing shallow was still putting decent numbers of ‘eyes in the boat, but the average size was better and you had a better chance of sticking a Fox River pig.

John gave Steve I the option as to what pattern we wanted to fish. Without a doubt, we wanted to fish the pattern that would give us the best shot at a monster ‘eye. We spent the majority of our day chasing fish in less than 8 feet of water. We fished three different presentations and all three caught fish. The first presentation was casting and dragging ¼ ounce jigs tipped with lake shiners. The second presentation was dead sticking a live bait rig with a floating jig head and shiner. The last presentation was casting plastics. For this presentation, my personal favorite was a 1/4 ounce Knuckle Ball Jig rigged with a B-Fish-N Tackle Ringworm or a Berkley PowerBait 3” Bubble Up Minnow Grub. The walleye that I am holding in the picture fell victim to the Knuckle Ball/Ringworm combo. Water levels and current had increased some since John had been there the day before. I am also assuming that the water clarity had changed some as well due to the increased water levels. What we found most effective for this day was to get on the bow mount and fan cast jigs until we found active fish. At this point, we would slow things down and thoroughly work the area. When the action slowed, get back on trolling motor and find some active fish.

Although we never got one of those real pigs that we were looking for, it was a good day on the water. The action was decent, and we did get some nice ‘eyes, but most of all it was great to get back in the boat with a couple buddies and enjoy the great sport of fishing. If you get a chance this spring, give the Fox River try. Action is only going to heat up more in the next couple weeks.