The tourneys have seen some good weights of fish come to the scale. That and PeteyB still had a good trolling bite going the last time I talked to him. I go mainly with two presentations now. Cranks or 3ways.
The slough area where we had a good multi-species bite going durung the ARM event would be my first area to check out. I started running crank both on lead and flat lines. with the wind blowing into this area, I was cleaning cranks about every two minutes. I did manage a few walleye here. Running 11fow with Wally Divers and bent lipped shad.I have to believe the fish are still there, just too much grass floating around. The best colors today were anything that resembled or had perch color. I found the main lake flat to have less weeds floting around. That was my next destination. I kept running the the same lures and found more biters in this area. 9 fow at speeds around 2.2mph. The crank bite was ok but I wanted to give the 3ways a try. A week or so earlier, this presentation hadn’t taken off yet. I made a switch to running the shallow side of the river channel that runs through the lake. Good news, I started getting hook-ups and all walleyes. I had to cut the trip short today but felt confident going into Saturday.
saturday I had the pleasure of fishing with Joe and Joe2 Gardner from Chippewa falls. The Gardner’s bought a raffle ticket for the humane society fund raiser. Their ticket won the fishing trip I donated. The wind yesterday must have blew the floating weeds into the shoreline. We started trolling cranks in the area that I pretyy much could not fish yesterday. A few trolling passes with not much action and I decide to give the main lake flat a go. The walleyes are roaming the flat. again running lead and flatlines, we soon had the rods bending. Bent lip shad in a variety of colors found most of the biters. White glass was a close second. Most of our fish came on the lead. I was running depths fron 9 to 11fow. Again at a speed aroung 2.2mph. Joe2 who is 12 years old and a very experienced angler, did a great job of adjusting the depths our cranks were running. We spent the morning pulling cranks and in the afternoon decide to see how the 3way was going.
Although we were having a blast pulling cranks, the 3way bite was even better. I started off by running adjacent to the river channel, on the shallow side. Bang-bang, the rods started bending. We started off with a varity of blades and colors to see which the fish preferred. Throughout the day we found the double bladed silver to attract the most fish. Hammered gold also produced nicely. Later in the afternoon the wind kicked up so we made a little adjustment. The wind coming from the side made it harder to keep the speed I wanted. Instead of dealing with the crosswind we would troll straight into it. This way we started off on the outside of the channel, troll accross it and up the other side. The depth only changed from 15 to 10 feet. When we would be in shallower water on either side, we would hook up.
Running the 3ways, I like to run at speeds around .8 to 1.2mph. We ended the day with close to 30 eyes and some decent white bass also.
Joe1 was taking the photos today so when he sends them to me I will post them.
The walleyes are crusing and taking both cranks and spinners. grab the kids and get out for some rod bending action. Thanks to Joe and Joe for sharing the boat today, it was a great trip.
Thanks for the report Don!
Nice report Don! I’ll be over this weekend to get my share
Great report Don,
I have the boat here at work and ready to go-think I’ll go out there at noon and pre-rig some rods. I have approx. 5 hours to decide either gills or eyes.
Jeremy
The good thing is, the bite remained solid all day, Quite a few fish in that 14.5 to 14.75″ range.
Let us know how you did today Doc.
Last night we did really good on the gills once we found them. Unfortunately, the water temp. was 74 degrees and females were full of eggs in deep water spots
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This is not boding well for this years spawn. On the night we caught 30-40 fish with largest ones pushing 3/4 pound, not a big fish night but fun never the less. Majority of our fish came on drop shot rigs v/s floats. Prior to finding fish, we did check out a couple spawning areas with no luck other than a couple cruising males. Starting to mark many more fish on the main lake flats, which is good news for the trolling bite.
Dang, thats a good night of fishing! Did you notice a panfish die off?
Unfortunately, yes. We did catch some gills with quarter sized lesions on their sides (reddish blotches). According to my fishing buddy, this is the same lesion seen on crappies up on Magnor last year due to a virus. I am going to look into it further and contact the local fisheries manager. I have been seeing dead bluegills all spring, not any great numbers but enough to make you notice something is going on. A good local source told me an eight pound walleye was taken last Saturday out of Menomin.
Sounds like columnaris. The following is from the Wi DNR:
Columnaris fish kills generally occur throughout the state during May and June each year and should not be confused with the viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS) virus which is a new disease feared to be spreading inland from the Great Lakes. Both diseases only infect fish species and are not a health risk to humans. However, people should not eat fish killed by Columnaris or VHS, and should wash their hands if they handle infected fish, because other bacteria that may be harmful to humans start feeding on the dead carcasses.
“The Columnaris bacteria is most prevalent in our lakes after water temperatures reach 65-70 degrees from late May to late June,” says Larry Damman, DNR fishery biologist. The bacteria levels increase after major rainfalls that supply additional nutrients on which the bacteria thrives into area lakes. VHS fish kills tend to occur at temperatures less than 60 degrees.”
Bluegill, crappies, yellow perch and bullheads, already stressed from seasonal spawning activities are most affected by Columnaris. The bacteria erode the fishes’ skin, causing leakage of bodily fluids and a fairly rapid death.
Although Columnaris can appear to produce large scale fish losses in a matter of several days, it usually does not have a catastrophic impact on overall fish populations, according to fishery biologists.
If anglers or landowners have additional questions or see large numbers of dead fish especially non-panfish species like carp, largemouth bass, muskie and walleye, they should contact their local DNR fisheries biologist to investigate the problem.
Thanks Jason, that sounds exactly like what it is.
Jeremy
Don, sounds like you and the Joe’s had fun, hope to do as well this weekend.
Yep, I notice the walleyes have it too. An 8 lber, thats great for this time of year. Maybe I wasn’t too far off. We had a little joke going when I was fishing with the 2 Joe’s. Everytime a fish came unbuttoned we would say “dang, lost another 8lber”.
Nice report.