Early August angling on Lake Wissota

Summer fishing patterns are well established on Lake Wissota. That means that walleyes and smallies are both on the chew! Read on to see how fishing opportunities are shaping up on western Wisconsin’s best multi-species lake.

I recently had the chance to spend four days in a row on Lake Wissota, fishing with different guests each day. Spending a number of days on the water really gives you a chance to develop a good game plan for putting fish in the boat, and I enjoy the opportunity to sharpen my presentations to a razor’s edge as time goes on. Last Saturday found me fishing with fellow IDA staffer Andy Loos and his buddy Wade. With a half day in hand and weather threatening to end our short day even earlier, Andy, Wade and I made a long run to a few of my hot-spots that are found well above the lake in the Chippewa River. We were greeted with nearly instant success, as walleyes and smallies were finding the bottom of the net before we could even get all of our lines in the water. Pitching and dragging live bait on light jigs was the order of the day, and we found willing fish relating to a number of different structural types, including shallow mid-river rock and sand flats, deep trenches surrounded by shallow water, and boulder-strewn deep water flats. It was one of those days when pretty much everything worked. We ended our time together with somewhere around 20-25 smallies and about 15 walleyes, including Andy’s big fish that hit the tape at 20". I had a great time fishing with Andy and Wade, and look forward to fishing together again soon. Thanks for making the drive up here from Winona!

At the end of the day on Saturday, the weather took a turn for the worse. Strong winds, rain, and much cooler temperatures settled over the Chippewa Valley. All of these gave me a bad feeling about my trip on Sunday. My premonitions turned out to be correct. Sunday was a ROUGH day on the water. I spent about three hours dissecting areas that were fantastically productive just 24 hours earlier, and could not tempt a single decent fish into buying what I was selling. So, I decided to turn lemons into lemonade. I picked up fellow IDA staffer Jason Sullivan and his buddy Matt and we went exploring "between the dams". The outlet of lake Wissota is, of course, a dam on the Chippewa River, and a couple of miles downstream, there is a second NSP hydroelectric dam. This area between the dams is strictly riverine in nature, and we decided to spend the afternoon chasing smallies in skinny, current-swept water. What a good move that was. Once we dialed in the pattern, we had relatively consistent action pitching bait and casting cranks or plastics for some beefy Wissota smallies. Ou best areas were the ones that had significant current and well-defined current seams. Here are Sully and Matt, with Matt holding our big frish of the trip that hit the tape just under 17". That beefy smallie hit an orange X-rap fished through heavy current. Thanks for joining me on Sunday guys, we turned a tough day into a very fun and productive one!

Two days so far with two more to go. My results on Sunday gave me pause prior to my trip on Monday. What would the new day bring? Had enough time elapsed to put those Wissota walleyes, which were VERY quiet on Sunday, back into a feeding mood? Well, my guests Luke and Katie from Eau Claire joined me to find out.

Katie, Luke and I started to work some of the areas that produced so well for me on Saturday. Pitching bait with slow (SLOW) retrieves started to trigger fish on shallow rock flats. Not great numbers in the morning, but enough action to make me think that things were starting to turn around. Before a quick lunch break, we had 5 eyes and 5 cats with a few smallies thrown in. We found these fish by combing 3 different areas, with no huge concentration of fish in any one spot. Well, after lunch, we only needed one spot to keep us busy for the rest of the trip. Here’s a picture of Luke and Katie holding a pair of Wissota "overs", one at 18 and one at 19.5". We really got on some nice walleye and smallmouth action in the afternoon, and I’m pretty sure we caught the same 20" flathead after lunch that we had caught just a couple of hours before. A key adjustment for us was to up-size our jigs from the standard 1/16 oz to a heavier 1/8 oz, to keep the jigs in the strike zone longer on the current-swept flat we were working. By the end of the trip, we had 13 walleyes, 8 cats, 7 smallies and a pike thrown in for good measure. What really impressed me about Monday’s trip was the size distribution of the walleyes. Only one fell below the 14-18" protected slot, with most at the high end of the slot (16-17") and two over the slot. Our big smallie hit the tape just under 18". When I saw Katie stick that fish, I didn’t think too much of it, and I stayed pretty level-headed until I saw it in the net bag. Nice smallie indeed! Thanks for spending the day with me Luke and Katie, I’m anxious to fish together again!

Tuesday was a fun day for me, as I had the chance to fish with my father-in-law Tim and get warmed up for week 8 of the Lake Wissota fishing league. Tim and I worked to refine the patterns I had been puting together for the previous 3 days, and do a little "outside-the-box" fishing, trying things that I had never considered in a quest to unlock another Wissota secret or two.

Tim and I pulled up to a shallow rock pile that had produced well the day before. Tim was set up to pitch bait and I was fishing outside of the box. First for me was to pitch a hair jig from B-Fish-N tackle (perch pattern). On the third cast….BAM…11" crappie (hmmmmm). On the 5th cast…BAM…16" walleye (hmmmmmmm). Ok, put the hair away. Next, tie on a B3 blade from B-Fish-N tackle. (The inside joke here is that guys who know me know that I’m not a big blade fan). 3rd cast….BAM….15" smallie (hmmmmmmmmmmmm). All the while, Tim is wondering what he needs to do to get bit. Our livebait pattern had dried up, at least on this particular spot.

After lunch, Tim and I noted that the Jim Falls dam, which controls flow into Lake Wissota, had opened and that there was significant current in the river. I talked Tim into spending some time pitching a current seam I had found in the weeks prior. I knew that if the dam was open, there would be fish stacked up on this seam and in a neighboring deep hole. Sure enough, once we got into position, it was game on! Smallies and walleyes starting flying into the boat, and for the hour or so that we worked this spot, we stayed very busy. Pitching crawler halves on 1/16 oz jigs ruled the roost on this spot.

At the beginning of our league competition, Jason Sullivan and I ran to this very spot to see if any active fish remained. Well, once we arrived, we found the current to be a mere trickle….the dam had shut down. Fish were no longer confined to the seam, and were free to roam the surrounding flats. We started pitching bait anyway….good thing we did! While the seam was gone, the fish were still nearby, and we had a great hour or so of mixed walleye and smallmouth action. Not tremendous size for either (big bass and big walleye both at 16.5") but enough action to keep racking up league points for both of us. As the evening wore on, we started to drag crawlers over the neighboring upriver rock flats to fill out our league limits of bass and eyes. We ended the night with a 4th place finish for Sully and my second-straight 1st place league finish. Jason’s been a great partner in league this year…I just need to put him in the winners circle before competition ends in a couple of weeks.

Lake Wissota’s walleye and smallmouth fishing is in GREAT shape. AS the month of August wears on, look for fish to become more and more current oriented. Times when there is significant flow due to rainfall (if we get any) or dam operations will likely outproduce other times. My schedule has some openings as we approach the Labor Day weekend….drop me a line if you’re ready to go toe-to-toe with some beefy smallies or beautiful walleyes!

(Edit: I have a last minute schedule opening for this coming Sunday….who wants to go fishing??)