Lake Wissota WI walleye fishing report, 6.5.08

Many of us have read the classic, "Lunkers Love Nightcrawlers." The title of this report should be, "Lake Wissota Walleyes Love Cranks on Leadcore." Boy do they ever!

With word that the Wissota trolling bite is in full swing, Tim and I set out to ply the 6000 acre backyard gem in search of midweek green and gold. Even with storms brewing to the south and a stiff breeze from the east, Tim and I put the smack down on a bunch of dandy Wissota eyes like the one shown in this first picture.

Our core presentation was to pull a variety of cranks, including shad raps (5s, 7s, and 8s), jointed shad raps (5s and 7s), minnow raps (7s and 9s), and salmo hornets (5s) on a combination of long lines and leadcore. We scored fish in depths ranging from 16 fow to nearly 30 fow, and varied our speeds from 2 to 3 mph. Our first two fish were both Wissota "overs", meaning over the 14-18" protected slot. Tim is shown here with the second of these two initial fish. A guy starts getting pretty confident when a trip is 20 minutes old and the first two fish are both quality fish in the 19-20" class.

Thankfully, the backyard gem continued to produce, both in terms of quanity and in terms of quality. Tim and I enjoyed a SOLID 4 hours of pulling cranks today without even tossing around the idea of doing something else. I stopped counting fish at 20, and instead started keeping track only of the "overs"….today we tallied 5, all between 18 and 20" long. NUMEROUS fish in the slot, and only a handful of little shakers. Today was one of those maddening days when one particular size and pattern accounted for over 80% of our catch. Close simply didn’t cut the mustard today. Of course, I only had two copies of the key bait in the boat, and a crib claimed one of them. So, it’s off to Scheels tomorrow morning to restock for next week’s guide trips. Here’s Tim with yet another leadcore over that fell for that very popular pattern.

Don’t have any leadcore in your arsenal? Don’t worry! After putting the trolling gear to bed, we switched over to pitching bait for the last hour of the trip. Tim put on clinic, scoring both walleyes and smallies by casting 1/16 and 1/8 oz jigs tipped with fatheads to mid-river rock bars. The smallie spawn must be just about complete, as these bronze bombers are beginning to show themselves with some consistency.

My guide trips over the coming weeks will be a blend of leadcore and long line trolling, combined with a healthy dose of finesse jig fishing in current areas. Then, it’s off to spinner/bottom bouncer land! If you’re hankering for an introduction to one of these productive multi-species techniques, drop me a line. Wissota will not disappoint!