April, 2012 will probably go down as one of my worst ever when it comes to walleye & sauger fishing on lake Wisconsin. It’s not that we didn’t catch fish, it’s more about the quality of the fish we did catch and the weather patterns that appeared to conspire against those of us who can only fish on weekends due to jobs that occupy our weekdays.
Week after week, we watched the weather turn sour right around Friday, followed by yet another cold front rolling in on Friday night or Saturday morning. Stories of limits being pulled out at the head of the lake on some of the few nice weekdays we had weren’t uncommon, but not many legal fish were being caught on weekends. Plenty of short fish but legals were hard to come by.
That all changed with the nice weather we had this past weekend. The weather front didn’t roll through our area until late Sunday afternoon, and despite the stronger than normal winds, I for one was quite happy to be fishing the front end of a system instead of the back end for a change.
Our best bait by far was a night crawler. Didn’t matter if you put it on a jig or some type of live bait rig, the fish were all over it. Just get it down there and let em fight over it.
I don’t mean to make it sound like we were hauling in big fish left and right. That is definitely not the case.
Lake Wisconsin is currently stuffed full of walleyes and saugers between 10-15″ long. There’s still plenty of keeper size fish and big fish in the system, but the small fish out number the big ones by a long shot right now.
Every system goes through cycles, and that cycle is currently dominated by fish that need another year or so to hit the magic 15″ mark.
Our average catch for a half day trip this past weekend was 30 walleyes & saugers with 5 or 6 surpassing 15″ long and a few over 20″ long. Basically one out of every 6 fish caught has a chance to be legal.
This may not be the news some people were hoping to hear from one of my fishing reports, but it is what it is. Nothing I say or do is going to change it.
Might as well just go fishing, enjoy the nicer weather and the fishing while you can!
Joel,glad to see the fishing is hopefully turning around!
Art
Congrats Joel for taking advantage of the good weather and for catching some quality fish.
A guide can only measure against his own standards. 
Your honest report speaks from the heart and it’s easy to see that you are doing your best to put some smiles on your client’s faces. 
Nice job Joel!
Water is dropping on Puckaway and the bite will slow down . See you on Lake Wis. soon.
From Jeff
Good to see they are turning on for and your customers. That many shorts would suggest a bright future.
Nice fish
Great read and pics Joel, glad to the bite turning on for you
Joel, it’s nice to see the fish are starting to cooperate for you! Even though I don’t feel to sorry for you with all of those early season reports you had
I’m good with that.
Fishing is fishing and I sure wasn’t looking for sympathy from anyone. Just reporting the facts as I see them.
Joel
Thanks Joel for the good factual reporting, Nothing beats time on the water, would have to think it will keep improving.
Jack
Joel, any chance the bigger fish are still held up in the river pools? Just thinking out loud. I was on the Miss for 4 days and found very good walleyes on the upper most wing dams and on structure immediate to a few spawning areas. Completely unexpected and uncharacteristic for this time of year.
Great to see things looking up Joel. Ma nature does conspire against us from time to time, so it’s great to see you makin’ hay so to speak right now. Good luck upcoming, and thanks for the report!
Joel
I don’t think so but can’t say it’s not possible. We haven’t heard anything great from up river but that doesn’t really mean much.
Either way, I won’t be going up there in my boat since it just doesn’t go thru shallow water well enough to make that trip worthwhile.