Lake Wisconsin Early Fall Crappies

Monday, Sept 4th, Labor Day

Today started off a bit slow. This was due to the weather more than the willingness of the fish to bite.

Ken Deja and I had motored a few miles down the lake and stopped at our first spot where I had just finished pulling out the rods and rigging them up when we both thought we saw lightning. A few seconds later we both heard thunder and saw more lightning. I immediately put the rods away and raced back to the boat landing. Ken and I sat in my truck and talked fishing for the next 45 minutes while waiting for a small thunder storm to move away. Better to be safe and live to fish another day than to take silly chance’s when lightning’s around!

Ken is a beginner fisherman for the most part and was anxious to soak up as much information on fishing as possible. Sometimes, this can make it easier to teach a person the subtle tricks of the trade.

Many times experienced fisherman develop habits that can be very hard to break. Beginners rarely have these habits and this can at times, allow them to pick up certain techniques faster than more experienced fisherman do.

For example, I can rember trying to get many an older fisherman to stop jigging their crappie lures and instead try to let it swim up and down as they slowly move the rod up and down or back and forth. In several cases, it seemed as though this was almost impossible for them to do and after telling them the proper tecnique for the umpteenth time, I would just give up and let them go about jigging aggressively.

At 8:00am we once again headed down the lake and fortunately, didn’t see anymore lightning the rest of the day. Temperatures were comfortable but light rain kept us company most of the morning.

The crappie bite was fairly good today. They didn’t exactly jump in the boat but by continuing to work our way up and down the shorelines, we were able to put 10 good crappies in the boat along with some better size smallies. A few the smallies may have measured 15" long. This may not sound all that big to many of you bass fisherman, but we are using 4# test line on ultra lite rod and reels. A 15" bass can put up quite a fight on that kind of tackle!

We also caught the usual mix of white bass, bluegills, sheepshead and some small largemouth bass.

Most of the crappies came from 8-12′ of water. Tiny jig an plastic combo’s caught a few, but the majority of them came on the minnow rigs today.

Hope you all had a great Labor Day!

Good fall fishing is coming our way. Make sure you get out and get in on some of the action!

Friday, September 1st

Clarey Busse agreed to come along on a big crappie scouting mission today. Our goal was to find new areas where I could take clients to catch big early fall crappies.

We didn’t find the mother lode by any means but we did catch a whole bunch of fish along the way.

We fought our way thru piles of voracious one year old white bass, a bunch of bluegills and a couple of hungry sheepshead. Along the way, we also caught a few big crappies.

Some spots kicked out good eaten size bluegills and a few locations held some small crappies but we didn’t find any new locations that would give up numbers of big crappies.

I’m sure there are plenty of spots out there that I haven’t found yet. But those spots are going to have wait until another time to be discovered.

If your going to be a fishing guide, then you better be willing to spend plenty of days just like this one. Or in the case of walleyes, plenty of days where you don’t catch very many fish at all.

Days where you stay away from the proven areas and set out to find spots that others don’t already know all about.

Another words, "Ya gotta do your homework".

On days like this, it actually helps quite a bit to bring someone else along who know’s how to fish.

Clarey did a good job of that.

We didn’t keep a bunch of fish by any means today but Clarey did get to keep a good meal of panfish for his efforts.

Thanks again for helping me out today Clarey.

Good luck out there guys and gals!