Lake Wisconsin Late Summer Crappie Fishing

The Lake Wisconsin crappie fishery is in excellent shape with a very large contingent of 2 to 3 year old fish making up the bulk of the fish we caught this past Labor Day weekend. Almost all of these fish will measure between 9" and 10" long.

That year class or groups of year classes that made up the really big crappies of the past couple years, appears to be nearing the end of their run. It’s still not uncommon to catch them by any means, but the likelihood of anyone catching a bunch of them is definitely in decline. Be patient and give this big year class of 9" to 10" crappies another couple of years, and your going to once again find plenty of those really big slabs pulling on the end of your line again.

On Friday August 31, Ron Nelson and I headed out for the first late summer crappie fishing trip of 2007. Ron kept insisting that I should feel "No pressure" what-so-ever because he was just happy to be riding around in the boat. (or something of that nature) I kept trying to tell Ron that we were going to catch a lot of fish today. Apparently, Ron had been looking forward to leaving Sault Ste Marie, MI and getting back to his home town of Sauk City for quite some time. I guess he really, really needed a vacation and he planned on enjoying it.

Turns out the crappie fishing was so good that every spot we stopped and tried kicked out at least a few fish if not more. Ron started out keeping every other fish but soon was keeping only every other third fish and shortly after he was only keeping every other fourth fish or so. Ron had no trouble at all putting his first ever limit of 25 crappies in the live well and all them measured between 9 & 10" long. Anything bigger than that was released with out hesitation. Congratulations and thanks for releasing the big ones Ron!

Ron joined up with me again on Saturday afternoon and we spent the rest of the day catching and releasing one fish after another. Ron didn’t want to keep any fish today so everything went right back in the lake. We caught lots of crappies and bluegills, quite a few smallies that were on the small side, plenty of sheepshead, white bass and even a walleye. Over the course of a day and a half, I would say that Ron and I easily caught well over 100 crappies.

That should take care of any stress you were feeling until you come back in November Ron!

On Saturday morning, Dennis & Marsha Knuth drove down from Reedsburg to check out the crappie fishing on Lake Wisconsin. They have been fishing Lake Redstone for many years and wanted to try some different waters that were not to far from home.

We started out early in the morning and it was quickly evident that these two spend a lot of time together in the outdoors. It turns out that they have been sharing a boat together for many years. Dennis is and avid trapper also and has been for a long time. Marsha doesn’t stay behind when Dennis goes on a trapping trip though and later this year, the two plan on celebrating their anniversary by taking a trapping trip to northern Wisconsin where I believe they are going to try to trap Fisher.

The crappies were again co-operating very well and by 11:00am, these two had no problem putting over 30 fish in the live well. Almost all of them were again between 9" & 10" long. They could have kept a lot more but felt they already had plenty so the rest were quickly released to be caught another day.

On Sunday, Ed and Joe Orlowski joined me bright and early for a day of crappie fishing.

Ed recently purchased property on Lake Wisconsin and so far their fishing trips out on the lake were not overly productive. So the main goal for the day was not only to learn some good locations to fish for crappies but to learn the proper presentation techniques that would be effective in getting them to bite. Oh yeah, it would be nice if they could catch some fish while they were at it.

They ended up keeping only about 20 crappies but they caught far more than that. At the most, they were keeping every other fourth fish or so.

By the end of the day, Joe proclaimed that he had easily caught more crappies today than he had caught in all five or six previous fishing trips to Lake Wisconsin combined.

According to Ed, they went back out on Monday in their own boat for a few hours fishing and easily put 15 more crappies in the boat.

We use two very simple rigs to catch all the fish this past weekend. The first is simply a minnow hooked thru both lips and weighted down with a 1/8oz split shot clamped on 12-14" above the hook.

A simple way to set the depth of this rig is to lower it to the bottom right over the side of the boat and then crank it two to three turns up off the bottom. Most of these crappies are suspended several feet off the bottom so try different depths and let the fish tell you what they want.

Set this rod in the rod holder and pay attention to the line while casting the other rig. If the line starts moving off to the side, pick it up immediately and set the hook. If you wait until the rod starts to bend you will not only miss more fish, but you will also be digging hooks out from deep down in the gullets of quite a few crappies. These fish are used to eating shad and can gulp down a large fathead minnow in no time flat!

The other rig is a 1/64oz jig/plastic combo tipped with a waxworm and cast into the shallows. I’ve been writing about these two techniques now for several years and anyone who cares too can easily search my past reports and find a gluttony of information on how to do this.

We do not anchor the boat. As a matter of fact, I don’t carry and anchor in the boat. Yes, I have one but don’t really see the point in using it.

The boat is a critical part of the presentation. Use your electric motor to keep the boat moving slowly in 12′-15′ of water while you cast.the jig/plastic into the shallows. Keeping the boat out in 12′ to 15′ of water means that your minnow rig will constantly be in the strike zone.

Instead of anchoring and casting a slip bobber, give this technique a serious chance this year. I’ll bet many of you will give up slip bobbering in Lake Wisconsin all together once you learn how effective this system can be.

Hope you all had a great summer and a great Labor Day weekend!

Joel "Boog" Ballweg