Lake Wisconsin Fall Crappies

The crappie fishing was a little slower for us this weekend but by hitting several different locations, we were able to find either small numbers of bigger fish or better numbers of eaten size fish.

Our techniques remain pretty much the same. The live bait minnow rigs didn’t do quite as well as the 1/16oz jig/plastic/waxworm combo’s did this weekend.
For the bigger fish, we used 3/16oz H20 Precision jigs rigged with a crappie beaver tail and tipped with a large fathead minnow. The H20 Precision jigs in the smaller sizes from 1/16 to 1/4oz work really well in combination with many of the plastics I use for crappies.

The surface water temperature out in the main lake remains between 70-72 degrees. I’m really looking forward to some cooler air temperatures this week. For one, I’m hoping that cooler weather will help the lake rid itself of the ridicules algae bloom that we’ve been dealing with the past few weeks but also because I’m ready to put all these crappies behind me and start chasing walleyes & saugers again. Fall walleye fever is starting to push its way to the fore front and I’m going to need a fix pretty soon!

We are starting to find more and more fish moving to slightly deeper water. This may be related to fishing pressure as there are quite a few people fishing in some of the more popular area’s. It might also have been related to the change in weather patterns this weekend. Sunday mornings weather was quite a bit cooler with a chilly northeast wind blowing at 10-15mph.
Last weekend we still found good numbers of fish in the 10-12′ range but this weekend we had to move down into the 14-16′ range in order to connect a little more consistently.

I’m going to be taking the next couple of weeks off from fishing and hopefully when I come back, the surface water in the main lake basin will be about 10 to 15 degrees colder.