Early March Walleyes on the Wisconsin River

Other than battling difficult winds, the weather this past weekend was quite nice considering its still early March. I haven’t been out a lot so far this year but the few times we did get out, the walleye fishing was not very good us.

I blame low water levels and plenty of food but fully admit that’s as much an educated guess as anything. We did break out of that rut this weekend though.

I hit the river below the Dells dam with clients Matt Pistorio and Jeff Wagner on Saturday and again with good friend and fellow guide Darren Dykstra on Sunday. We fished the afternoon into the evening on both days and by far our best bite occurred right at dark.

Matt & Jeff’s primary objective was to learn new techniques but also catch fish in the process. Strong southerly winds made doing anything on some of my favorite stretches of the river just about impossible. We tried dragging and casting several areas on Saturday afternoon but the only bite we could find doing daylight hours was a deep water vertical bite which was producing mostly small fish with a few keepers mixed in here and there. The only other fish willing to do battle were a couple of average size sturgeon which proved to be kind of fun considering the slow walleye fishing.

About an hour before dark, we headed for an area I strongly suspected would be holding better fish. This spot gave up a small fish to Matt as soon as his jig hit the bottom while vertical jigging but then died off to nothing quickly. We switched to shallower water and began dragging upstream using 1/8oz “Draggin Jigs” tipped with ringworms. This didn’t produce immediately but the first fish absolutely crushed my orange core ringworm and measured up at 21-1/2 inches which solidified my belief that we were indeed in an area capable of producing some fish.

With late evening quickly turning the sky darker, the fish started to respond favorably and Jeff showed he had the hot hand on this trip. His orange 1/8oz draggin jig/orange core ringworm tipped with a minnow brought in the majority of the fish we boated. The only negative was that within an hour after dark settled in, the bite was pretty much over with.

We ended Saturday with 3 keepers, 2 slot fish, a 23" pike & 2 sturgeon.

Sunday was pretty similar with the day light bite proving to be very tough once again. We did scratch out one keeper walleye and two decent smallies that both crunched a ringworm. By far our best bite occurred at dusk once again.

I’m fortunate to be friends with and to be able to fish with some very good walleye sticks and Darren definitely falls into that category and he was proving it on this night.

Darren’s hot jig combination was a 3/16oz sour apple precision jig/green core ringworm and he was not tipping it with a minnow but fishing it bare. I tried several other combinations and the only other combo’s that caught a fish for me was an orange/chartreuse jig and orange core ringworm or a black jig tipped with an electric blue/pearl tail ringworm. It seemed like Moxi’s in the same colors should have produced but they didn’t. Not sure why but it sure wasn’t for a lack of trying to get them to work. For whatever reason, they seemed to want ringworms and nothing else. And when they did decide to bite, it wasn’t a subtle tap, but more like a crushing, knock-out blow that would jolt your arm.

Sunday evening was definitely better than Saturday. We ended up with 7 legals, 3 slot fish, & 2 decent smallies.

Definitely the kind of fun we were looking for. Even if you’re just the net man for most of the evening.