Autumn bounty on Lake Wissota, 10.13.07

A sun-kissed mid-October day, filled with walleyes, crappies, and even a bonus musky….what could be better than that?

Joining me today were John N from Menomonie and his son-in-law Adam. While their wives were attending a wedding and hitting the mall, John and Adam spent the afternoon doing a bit of jig pitching and crank pulling on Lake Wissota. John and I fished together a couple of weeks ago during a dismal and rainy day, and when we were greeted at the launch by today’s cloudless skies, light winds and air temps pushing 60, we were already ahead of the game.

At this time of the year, I tend to split my attention between the Chippewa River above the lake and the main lake itself. John, Adam and I started our trip by pitching fatheads on jigs to a current-swept rock and sand flat, and later transitioned to a series of shoreline-oriented current seams in the uppermost portions of the Chip. We invested nearly two solid hours, and left a whole bunch of jigs in the rocks, with only two eyes to show for our efforts. A change in tactics was in order!

While running back down towards the main lake, I cut the throttle and slowly cruised over an expansive sand flat that lines the inside of a sweeping bend in the Chip. This area is probably 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile in overall length. While slowly cruising along, I noted the presence of several significant pods of fish…more fish than I had seen all day up until then. I decided to invest a bit of time pulling cranks on leadcore through this area, just to see if I could covert some of those sonar arcs into fish in the net.

Adam had never pulled cranks on lead, and I was right in the middle of his inaugural lesson on deploying baits and setting depths when his rod was absolutely hammered by our first cranking fish of the day…which also turned out to be Adam’s first musky. This healthy 33" fish, shown in the first photo, smacked a tiny morsel of an SR5 in about 10 feet of water.

Over the course of the next 90 minutes, we made a number of passes over this sand flat, and our efforts were rewarded with a number of scrappy Wissota walleyes. These were primarily slot fish, like the 17+" fish that Adam is holding in the second photo. Most if not all of these fish sported plump bellies, a testament to the success of their fall feeding binge.

As the afternoon wore on, we ran out to a portion of the main lake that has been a consistent leadcore/crankbait producer for me during the past month. Just like clockwork, as I cut the throttle, the locator screen lit up with fish in the lowest 5 feet of the water column. We deployed an array of #5 through #9 shad raps on leadcore, and were back on the fish in short order. John brought the first fish to the boat, ~ 100 yards into the pass, and it hit the tape at 17 7/8". The second was a heartbreaker, 14 1/16", just a smidge too long to earn a hot grease release. The third fish was a dandy….Adam’s 20 incher that popped an SR9 in 22 feet of water, right next to one of Wissota’s abundant fish cribs. With a few fish in the box already, Adam let this Wissota "over" swim away to fight another day. Way to go Adam, those 20+ inchers are way better in the lake than they are in the pan.

Our first pass over this area yielded 5 fish ….but the next two passes yielded a total of 1 . We caught fish on a variety of SR5 and SR9 patterns, but the one common factor was speed: 1.8 mph or less was the key for us. Our lake fish came from deeper water…22 to 25 feet, while our river fish were shallower, 12-15 feet or so.

With main lake water temps still in the low 60s, I expect this leadcore/crankbait bite to remain intact for perhaps as much as 1.5-2 more weeks, provided that Canada doesn’t spring a leak and send us a snowstorm. Fish remain scattered over larger structural features, so covering water with a trolling presentation is an effective way to contact as many fish per trip as possible. Cranking is effective for a variety of species. While walleyes are the primary catch, we also popped Adam’s musky and this pair of well-proportioned crappies that couldn’t resist our cranks on ‘core. There is still some time this fall to take your first trip on Lake Wissota….drop me a line if you are ready to tap into Wissota’s autumn bounty.