Lake Wisconsin Fall Crappie fishing report

Saturday, 9-23-06

Today I had the pleasure of sharing my boat with Charlie and Billy Hulburt from Rockton, Illinois.

The day started out great with calm winds and comfortable temperatures. Things got even better when we found some very large crappies in the first spot we stopped to fish.

Charlie told his wife he had booked a crappie fishing trip for them on Lake Wisconsin a few weeks back. Shortly after they were reading some of my reports and viewing pictures of crappies that clients had caught on earlier trips. Billy’s response was something to the order of….. Sure, like we’re going to catch crappies like that!

Actually Billy, the crappies you and Charlie caught were some of the biggest ones caught this fall.

Charlie and Billy took turns pulling up several very big crappies in the 14 to 15" size range using a plain minnow rig fished right over the side of the boat. All of them came from 4-8 feet of water. When there shallow like that, they’re usually willing and ready to eat. Just get a minnow in front of them and they’ll eat it.

After the early morning spot petered out, things slowed down considerably and we had to work hard the rest of the day to put any more crappies in the boat. We fished a lot of different spots and caught very few fish along the way.

Around noon or so, the nice calm weather we had in the morning disappeared. The wind wasn’t all that bad but the rain was steady for the next two to three hours. When it finally let up, we decided to check a few more spots before calling it a day. Good thing we did to because the last two locations kicked out a few bonus fish.

At the end of the day, Charlie and Billy didn’t have a big pile of crappies but the 14 they did have were all dandy’s!

It was a pleasure to fish with such a nice couple as you two Charlie and Billy! Thanks for letting me be your guide today on Lake Wisconsin and congratulations on some very nice fish.

Sunday, 9-24-06

Rich Fink had spent a day this spring fishing with me for crappies with his son and daughter. When he booked another trip for fall crappies, I thought maybe he was going to bring them along again. Instead he brought a couple of full time comedians along. This was my first impression of Bob and Mike LePak. In the early morning hours, hardly a minute passed with out one of them cracking a joke or doing an impression.

I soon discovered that they both had another talent. They could both catch fish quite well!

The day did not start out all that well. Both of the local bait shops were closed again when I came through town and this put me in kind of a bad mood. Then when I got to the boat landing, I saw waves rolling into the boat launch and quickly realized the wind was colder and stronger than I thought it would be. I thought with these strong northwest winds, boat control was going to be a real challenge and maybe not even possible.

After stopping in at the Moon Valley bait shop to pick up minnows, we headed to the same spot that had been good to me yesterday morning. But after fishing there for over an hour, we only managed to scrape up one nice crappie along with a few small perch and bass.

This didn’t seem to bother the guys from the Bob and Tom show…I mean Bob and Mike. (Sorry, couldn’t resist) Their wise cracks and jokes kept right on coming. Apparently, just being out on the lake fishing was good enough for them. What a great attitude to have!

I was actually kind of worried, thinking that getting any fish at all today was going to be a real challenge. My game plan was to hit as many spots as possible and hopefully, we would find some fish in one of them.

The next spot failed to produce anything more than a white bass or two.

The third spot was out in the open where a crib had been sunk near a drop-off years ago that had on a few occasions kicked out some nice crappies for me but hadn’t done much of anything so far this year. I don’t remember who caught the first one but it was a pretty nice fish.

In the process of netting the fish, the boat was blown off course by the wind. We ended up about 20 yards down wind. I quickly got the boat back under control and moving towards the crib with the bow mount electric motor. That’s when the sonar screen lit up with fish. They were stacked one on top of the other in 14′ of water all the way up to about 8′ below the surface.

Next thing I heard was "fish on" and before I could grab the net, someone else was claiming they had one on too. Both the LePak brothers were pulling in nice crappies when Rich hooked into one also.

A triple!

We landed two of the three and I allowed the boat to drift back and the screen once again lit up. This time I threw and icon up on the GPS and for the next five to six hours, Rich, Bob and Mike used plain minnow rigs fished 10′ down right over the side of the boat to catch 27 nice crappies.

It ended up being the best day of the fall for numbers of fish. We didn’t get any giants like yesterday, but the average size still ran between 11-13" long.

When the crappies slowed down, I pulled out a 1/64oz jig and plastic combo, tipped it with a waxworm and dropped it overboard. That rig proceeded to catch a few more crappies. It also produced numerous bluegills. We already knew there were bluegills in this school because they had caught several on the minnow rigs. The jig/plastic combo worked much better at catching them and at times, they would hit it as fast as I could get it down. Most of the bluegills were small but several ran in the 8" size range. Nothing special, but still good eating size.

It ended up being a blast. The wind blew, but not strong enough to keep us off the spot for long.

We sat in that spot until the end of the Packer game catching crappies and listening to the game.

Now this is what fall crappie fishing is suppose to be like!

I had a great day fishing with you guys Rich, Bob and Mike! Glad you were able to come along and enjoy one of the best crappie fishing days that I’ve had in some time.