Eau Claire and Chetek Area Lake Report

The fish have been on a terror run as of late in the early morning and late afternoon. I haven’t been able to get out nearly as much as I wanted to this year and when I have my results haven’t been too spectacular. I’ve been trying a lot of lakes that are new to me instead of the same old spots. Plus the cold weather has really not helpped my camera and the batteries when I have done well. Seems everytime I want to take a picture the extreme cold has zapped the batteries.

I was able to get out to two different spots this past week. I was able to get photos from one of the lakes because my wife was the camera operator. The perch have been really active on one of the lakes I tried out in the Eau Claire area. The one pic posted here is of a perch just short of 12″.

I was fishing 10′-15′ of water and away from all of the crowds. I mainly was targeting an area off of a point and fished the edge of a steep drop off. I also tried the flat next to this area that also produced. It took several holes and placing the reliable MarCum LX-3tc into each one of them to find the right spots.

The big perch were willing to hit almost anything. When they hit they hit hard. I caught the majority of them on BFT purple/pink Mini Merts. I also had a minnow down on a slip bobber, which is always typical for me. I usually run one jigging pole and one with a slip bobber and minnow. Her is a photo of a double I had. Turned out to be a little tricky in reeling them in and keeping them out of the camera cable and Reel Weeds.

I had started early in the morning and as the day went on the fish moved out of the drop off around the middle of the morning leaving my camera screen and flasher blank. That is when I moved to the flats. I could see several fish on the flaser, but they didn’t want to bite, so the camera went down the hole to investigate. I did notice them hanging in my Reel Weeds and staying in TIGHT to them. I was unable to get them to go a couple of feet over to any of the lures I was throwing at them. As the day went on the fish moved out of the weeds and abandoned me and moved back to the drop off. I again was able to target them just like I was earlier in the day. They did leave me with a nice meal.

I also made it up to the Chetek, WI area for a morning of fishing. The key again was to get away from other fisherman and big groups. I’m just learning a couple of the lakes up that way and found a couple of spots on the map that I thought would work out and headed to them. One spot is an area that is in 12′ of water just off of a bog area. The other was a sharp drop off with a lot of rock off of a point. These two places both produced a great multi-species bite. My main bait of choice was a BFT Lil Cecil tipped with a lone waxie. This bait was resonsible for a couple small bass, one pike and numerous crappies. The crappies were all 11″-13″ in size.

The weather is starting to warm up the next couple of days and I see the bite really turning on. Do yourself a favor and get out and wet a line in the balmy 20 and 30 degree weather we have coming this weekend and go get some…..