Sunday, August 27th
This morning I had couple of regulars back in the boat fishing with me.
Bob Wenger and his son Neal have both been out with me before and this time Neal brought his nephew Tyler Goebel along.
Tyler had heard a lot about the fish his uncle and grandfather had caught on previous trips and was anxious to catch a few of his own. He did quite well too!
Success on the big crappies we were after didn’t come easy today though. We tried the hot little spot that had been productive for us on previous trips, but there were no crappies willing to bite at that location.
We kept casting our jig/plastic combo’s tipped with waxworms into every good looking spot we could find while Bob worked a minnow rig on the other side of the boat. Neal, Tyler and I all caught a bunch of bluegills but guess who caught the first big crappie? Bob did!
He had been spending most of the morning weeding through a pile of small white bass. But every once in a while he would reel up a real nice size crappie and that got Tyler kind of excited. Eventually, he had to have one of those live bait rigs with a minnow lightly hooked thru the lips.
Unfortunately, all he could catch on that was bunch of small white bass.
Neal continued to pepper the shoreline with a small jig/plastic/waxworm combo and he was having a ball pulling in bluegills of all sizes.
We eventually came to another one of those small spots that was holding some big crappies and Tyler was finally successful, catching several of them on the jig/plastic/waxworm combo.
It ended up being a pretty successful trip by the end of the morning. The weather was nice, the fishing was even better and the company in the boat was excellent. Another fun morning fishing on Lake Wisconsin.
Neal, Bob and Tyler ended up keeping about 12-14 crappies and probably twice that many bluegills. Sounds like a fish fry in the making!
Bob and Neal, Thanks much for letting me take you guys out fishing again. Seems like we always have pretty good luck when you guys come up fishing.
Take care and good fishing!
Saturday, August 26th,
My neighbor Rod Schwegel and his father Bill spent the morning fishing with me this past Saturday. Our target species this morning was big crappies but Rod and Bill were willing to wade thru a bunch of other fish like bluegills, white bass, largemouth, smallies and sheepshead to catch the big crappies.
Rod and his father have caught a lot of crappies in the lakes around their homestead back in northern Minnesota. Rod is now married with three daughters and those lakes in northern Minnesota are just a little to far away. So his wife Christi decided to give him a guided fishing trip for his birthday, enabling him to shorten the learning curve on catching crappies and bluegills in the local waters of Lake Wisconsin.
Man, what a great present!
Fortunately, the stormy weather we had last week came to and end on Friday and we only had to deal with a bit of fog. The sun never really showed itself until after the morning trip was over and temperatures were comfortable enough to allow us to fish in T-shirts.
The early going did not produce to many big crappies and although Bill did hook into a few, they always seemed to come unbuttoned right at the side of the boat before the net man was ready.
We were getting steady action though. Rod was pulling in a bluegill on just about every other cast and the white bass were giving Bill plenty of action on the other side of the boat. In between, they also caught a few largemouth bass, smallies and sheepshead. Not what we were looking for but plenty of business going on at the end of there lines.
Finally we hit into one good spot that was kicking out some dandy crappies and over the next half and hour or so, Rod put several big ones in the boat.
Our lure of choice this morning was a cubby mite jig in chartreuse tipped with a waxworm. Most of the big crappies came out of one small spot but the bluegills were plentiful in just about every spot we checked. We would cast the cubby mite into the shallows and slowly swim it back to the boat. Most of the time, the bait didn’t get far before a bluegill smacked it!
By the end of the morning, Bill and Rod had about a dozen crappies and another 15 or so bluegills that they kept for a meal with the family.
The crappie really are just starting to show up and this early fall pattern will only get better over the next several weeks.
It was a lot of fun fishing with you Rod! I’m glad you dad was able to come along. It was fun fishing with him also.
Happy Birthday Rod! Hope you and your daughters are able to get out there and catch a bunch of those bluegills and crappies soon.
Joel "Boog" Ballweg
Neal with a nice looking Lake Wisconsin bluegill.
Bob with one of the nice crappies he caught.
VERY nice fish. Looks and sounds like you guys had a blast. Gotta love catching crappies like those.
Thanks for the report and pics. 
Thanks, Bill
Wow nice fish. I haven’t see those in a long time. What kind of depths were you fishing and what kind of structure if I might ask?
Those are some dandy crappies, mmmmm-mmmmm! Might have to thaw a pack or two, a fish fry sounds good. Nice work.
Very nice slabs
Krisko,
Sorry for the slow response. The company I work for doesn’t much like it when I spend time during the work day playing around on fishing websites. It’s usually okay if I log on during lunch time though.
Starting in late summer or early fall, we start to find these big crappies supended just out from the first major breakline. In Lake Wisconsin, thats approximately 10′ deep.
They like to suspend at about the same depth as the first major break into deep water. (8-12′)
They move into these areas as soon as the late summer nights get cool enough to start bringing down the surface water temperatures. This cooling effect tends to push all the small minnows and young of the year shad away from the surface and into deeper, more temperture stable water.
The older, bigger crappies pick up on this pretty fast and take advantage of it.
What I do, is keep the boat over the first major breakline with the electric trolling motor. I like to drop one line right over the side with a plain minnow rig or a tube jig or anything else that you think will work for crappies.
Then, as we slowly motor along the breakline, we cast small jig/plastic combo’s like a cubby-mite, into the shallows. Many times, we’ll see some of these crappies move up shallower during the day. Probably following the minnows as the water warms up.
It’s really a very simple technique. And it’s a consistent pattern year in and year out. I do believe it would work on any major reservoir system with crappies in it.
JWB