Wisconsin River Spring Walleyes – Dells

When it came time to decide where I was going to fish this past weekend, the Wisconsin river below the Dells dam was getting only mild consideration. I had not been up there for two weeks and had not heard anything good from friends who were up there the weekend before. High, cold, flooding water had left them baffled & frustrated that the walleyes wouldn’t bite.

Another friend had a really positive report on a giant perch bite on pool 9 of the Mississippi river that was sounding pretty good to me. In the end though, I just didn’t feel like another 2 hour road trip, both ways! So off to the Dells we went.

We arrived before sunrise to below freezing temperatures once again this year. It really does seem like we’ve spent 80% of our spring walleye fishing in below freezing temperatures. Hate to admit it, but I’m kind of getting used to it.

Flow coming out of the Dells dam was over 30,000cfs which is the highest flow rate I can ever remember fishing in on this stretch of river. I’ve seen it much higher but never from a boat while fishing. And ever since it came up, the water temps had dropped from about 40 degrees down to around 36-37 degrees. Worse yet, due to recent rains & total lack of sunshine, it wasn’t warming up again. The water had been high for over a week and the water temps had not risen more than a degree at best.

The first two hours were spent searching for fish with some success but nothing to write home about. Robb Porubsky was basically doing all the damage by himself having landed 3 fish while no one else even had a bite. About that time, I was thinking: Thank god someones got a hot stick!

But somewhere around 8:00 or 9:00am, we found the fish starting to get much more aggressive. It may have been the 4" oystershell moxi I just tied on but I gotta believe that was only part of it.

We were basically working slack water area’s with flooded timber or the very edge of these area’s. The only thing that had changed as the morning passed was the sun, which was shining bright & strong. Pretty rare event so far this spring. And that strong, warm sunshine seemed to be turning on these fish in a big way.

Near as I can tell, these fish were finishing up there spawning rituals. Some of the males were milting which really isn’t all that unusual. What is unusual, was a 23-1/2" walleye spilling eggs all over the back of the boat as Robb was holding it up for pictures. Been a long, long time since I’ve seen that happen in my boat.

Another unusual thing that occurred, none of these fish wanted anything to do with a minnow. Dick had started out the morning fishing with a plain live bait rig. It never got hit once. Later he made some cast to the same area’s we were casting our jig & plastics to. Nothing. They weren’t interested.

Even more interesting was when I tipped my jig & plastic with a minnow. They wouldn’t touch it. The only thing we caught fish on was a 3/16oz jig & 4" moxi. Our best colors were in order: Oystershell, Pro Blue, Chart/Pepper & Peanut Butter.

By high noon though, the bite was over. The sun was still shining bright but the fish were no longer interested in anything we had to offer.

Our final tally – 23 walleyes. 5 keepers with the smallest fish measuring 18" long, 2 @ 19" long & 2 @ 19.5" long.

We also had 1 @ 23-1/2" long, 1 @ 25" long, 2 @ 26" long and 1 @ 29-1/2" long. All the rest were between 20-22" long.

I did go back on Sunday morning with two other friends hoping for a repeat. What we found was some tough sledding with no sunshine. Instead we got a nice 1 hour long snow shower which didn’t seem to turn on the walleyes anymore than it was turning on us.

We stuck it out till 11:30am and scratched out 10 walleyes. Four keepers, one shortie and one good one that measured 27" long. The others fell into that 20-22" range again.

If that was the end of our pre-spawn, spring walleye fishing for this year, I’ll take it. It was definitely one of the best spring bites I’ve ever experienced on the Wisconsin river and I thank god I was able to share it with a couple of good friends.

I’m sure they won’t forget it anytime soon and neither will I.