Lake Wisconsin Crappie fishing report

Weekend of 5-6-06

Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday Crappie fishing report

Spent Friday afternoon fishing with my wife Nancy and her older brother Bill Bahnfleth. Due to some cold temperatures, the crappies were still staging just off the first drop-off adjacent to the spawning areas. We caught them by dropping our minnow rigs right over the side of the boat, letting them hit bottom, then cranking the reel from 2 to 4 turns off the bottom.

Bill got the hot hand and ended up pulling in more than both Nancy and I together. By 6:30pm, we all had enough of the cold weather and the 14 crappies in the live well were more than enough for us. Since Bill only gets to go out fishing with us about once every other year or so, I cleaned them up and sent them all home with him. It’s always great to see you Bill! Looks like you have the bragging rights for now, but I’ll get ya next time!

On Saturday, I was able to share my boat with Richard, Nicole and Andy Fink. They came from the Hustiford area and were very much interested in catching some nice Lake Wisconsin crappies.

After a hard frost on Friday night though, these fish were shut off big time and Saturday morning was very slow. Fortunately, things warmed up considerably by early afternoon and the crappies began to move up into the shallow waters where they found a minnow dangled a foot or two below a bobber to their liking. Unfortunately, we had to call it a day by 3:00 in the afternoon, which pretty much coincided with the best bite of the day. Still, the three of them managed to put 18 very nice crappies into the cooler and almost all were caught between 2:00 and 3:00pm.

Glad you guys stuck it out through the tough morning bite. It really paid off in the early afternoon.

I enjoyed fishing with the three of you. Hope you come again some time soon!

Sunday, May 7nth I met Jeff Keefer, his son Nick and their friend Dale at the Moon Valley boat launch early in the morning. From there, we headed to the same area where we left the crappies the day before. Jeff got his line in the water first and I think he dang near had a crappie in the boat before the other two managed to get a minnow out of the bucket. Guess he wanted to get a jump start on these other two guys.

There were only a few fish left on the spawning grounds from the day before though, and it was a pretty slow day over all for crappies.

Smallmouth bass however, were more than willing to take up the charge and by the end of the day, 11 crappies, approximately 12-13 bass and two sheapshead did their best to keep these three busy. We caught fish in every spot we tried but never more than a few in any particular location.

It was fun fishing with these three guys and it was great to to see Nick catch his first crappie and his first walleye ever. The walleye measured 15" right on the head and we all decided that it was best to let it go. We figured that a game warden might not get the same measurement that we did so there was no sense taking a chance. Wish I would have known it was Nick’s first walleye though, a picture for him before releasing it would have been nice. Sorry about that Nick! You’ll catch a bigger one next time and we’ll make sure to get a picture of it!

Here is another nice crappie Nick caught early Sunday morning.

Surface water temperatures were running about 59 degrees in the main lake basin and as high as 65 degrees in the bays during the hottest part of the day on Sunday.

It looks to me like the crappie run is pretty much over with. There will probably still be a few schools of them spawning here and there over the next week, but the majority of them appear to have finished up their business in the shallows for this spring.

Just the same, good luck if you go!

Boog