Friday, March 25th
Spent Friday on the river at the Dells with Mike Lesch. It was 8am by the time we got our first line wet and fishing was a bit slow at the start.
Water levels were very low once again and even launching the boat was a little tricky with the trailer almost off the end of the ramp.
Early morning hours showed a surface water temp of 38 degrees but by late afternoon, it was running as high as 41.5 degrees in a few areas.
Air temps were a bit cold in the morning also but by the middle of the day, it was quite nice out. Hardly any clouds blocked the sun and only a cold wind that appeared to switch directions later in the day kept us from peeling off a layer of clothes. It can be hard to tell wind direction when fishing on the river up there. With all the shear rock walls the winds tend to swirl around and telling which direction there coming from can be difficult.
Mike had fished the river a few times with waders from shore, but it was his first trip fishing it from a boat. That being the case, I decided to start at the dam and work our way downstream.
The morning hours proved to be slow and only smaller fish were caught as we worked our way down stream.
Finally, around mid afternoon, we found a location down stream that was holding active walleyes of legal size. All four walleyes shown in the picture with Mike were caught on a jig and twister tail.
Unfortunately, due to a family get together, I had to quit early today and by 4pm we wrapped things up and headed back to Rivers Edge. This was one those times where I really would have prefered to stick around until dusk and see if any of the bigger fish would show up.
All in all though, not a bad trip. We had to work for these fish, but at least they did show up.
Saturday, March 26th I managed to tear good friend Mike Jacobs away from his maple syrup operation long enough to spend a day on the water at the head of Lake Wisconsin.
Jake and I try to get out up here every year in the early spring, but sometimes that can difficult for him to do when the syrup is running heavy like this year.
Seeing bright blue bird skies again this morning didn’t reallly excite me to much but with the morning surface water temp running at 38 degrees, I figured we would certainly be able to entice a few fish into the boat.
Fishing was spotty, and many of the ones we did catch were small. The addition of stinger hooks certainly helped bring a few extra fish in as well.
A plain jig and minnow, jig and plastics, hair jigs and live bait rigs all caught fish today. No one method way out fished the rest either. All the fish we caught were saugers. We did spend several hours in the early morning hours trying to locate walleyes but none were to be found. And with low water levels, it didn’t appear to be worth our time making a long run up river.
Later in the day, water levels did increase and this did seem to increase the activity level of the saugers as well.
Surface water temperatures soared all the way up to 42 degrees by late afternoon due to bright sunny skies and a mild wind blowing straight up river.
The fishing certainly was not fast and furious by any means, but if you were willing to work at it, they could be caught. There was brief spurt of action during the middle of the day but other than that, it was slow and sporadic. Still, by the end of the day, we managed to get six legals and many more smaller ones. The biggest sauger was full of eggs and ran a little over 18". She was released.
Mike is shown in the picture with the fish that went home with us.
Fishing for primarily saugers should remain good over the next two weeks here at the head of Lake Wisconsin. The weather will have alot to do with that.
Good luck fishing out there guys!
JWB
Great report!
Tuck