Lake Wisconsin fishing at it’s best!

For a young, up and coming fisherman like Justin Freitag, the fishing he and his dad experienced this Fathers Day on Lake Wisconsin was a dream come true.

I don’t think that I’ve ever seen or experienced a better bite on Lake Wisconsin than what we saw over the past weekend.

Sunday, June 17th

Well the first two days of this three day weekend had gone unbelievably well. On my way to the boat landing this morning, I was wondering if it could possibly hold out and be that good for one more day.

Today, I was going to meet up with Mike Freitag and his son Justin, who was 10 years old. Mike is a co-worker of mine and he wanted to spend some quality time fishing with his son on Fathers Day. So we met up at the Kwik Trip in Sauk City and they followed me out to the boat landing.

Shortly after, we were in the boat and on our way to yesterday’s hot spot. Our plan was to troll crank baits behind planer boards. We had hoped to run at least four lines but for the first hour or so, we didn’t have all four lines in for very long before a fished jumped all over our bait.

We had just settled down into our chairs after getting setup when the first fish hit and it looked like a good one. Justin grabbed the rod out of the holder and the battle began. It took him a few minutes, but eventually he reeled the big fish to within 20′ of the boat where it rolled on the surface and we got our first good look at it. I could hardly believe my eyes. He had on a real nice muskie. No one had brought one of those in the boat all year. Justin finally pulled it within range of the net and we were able to bring it into the boat and snap some photo’s. Mike spent a few minutes holding it along the side the boat until she let him know that she was ready to swim away on her own. Soon after Mike explained to his son that he was one lucky guy because at the tender young age of 10, he had caught his first muskie and dad still had never caught one. A dandy 34 incher at that.

Well dad didn’t have to wait much longer before he caught his first muskie. The next fish was not as big as the first, but sure enough, dad now had his first muskie. A nicely colored 25 inch long one. No muskies for the whole first half of the year and then two back to back. I never would have believed it but I didn’t really have any time to think about it.

As Mike was letting out one of the lines, he had a solid hit and hooked up with what appeared to be yet another good fish. This time he reeled in a nice, chunky 29" northern pike.

This was way to strange for me to believe. Honest to god, we catch more muskie during and average year than we do pike. Maybe three muskies a year compared to zero pike in an average year. I didn’t really have a lot of time to think about it though because before we could get all the lines back out, we had on another big fish. Justin took the rod this time and another long battle began. He finally won the battle and in the net was a dandy 25-1/2" walleye.

Wow, this was going to be a great day! The first four fish of the day all came within a half hour and they were all 25" long or better.

We finally got a chance to sit down in our chairs and relax a bit around 9:00am. By that time the guys had reeled in a couple more walleyes measuring 24, 23, and 20" long along with several shorties and one real nice crappie. The only legal fish was a lone 17-1/2" sauger.

With a big smile on his face, Mike asked where all the eaten size fish were. They had promised to bring a couple walleye fillets home for grandma and it wasn’t looking very good right now.

Last year at this time Mike was over in Iraq serving his time in the Army National Guard. He must have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about the things he would do and share with his family when he returned back here to Wisconsin. He had already paid a $50.00 deposit and now I wanted to thank him for putting his life on the line while serving our country. So I explained to him that the rest of his trip was paid in full. He wouldn’t have to worry about cleaning the fish either as I was going to do that for him also. I can’t do that for every serviceman or woman out there, but I could do it for at least one of them. It may have caught him a little off guard because he seemed to be at a loss for words there for a while.

The next hour or so was kind of slow but we finally found another hot spot and the fire drill started all over again. This time practically every fish they caught was between 17-1/2 and 18-1/2" long. All saugers except for one walleye.

We finally wrapped things up at about 11:45am. The guys had caught 12 walleyes, 8 saugers, 2 muskie, 1 pike and 4 crappies. Of the 20 walleyes and saugers, eleven were between 17-1/2 and 25-1/2" long.

What a day! This will certainly be a trip that I will never forget. The smile that would not leave Justin’s face said it all.