Lake Wisconsin Late Fall Walleye & Sauger Fishing

The last few days of the open water fishing season were reserved for brothers & nephews who were in town for the Thanksgiving day family gathering and for my niece Miranda’s wedding, which was on Saturday.
My eldest brother Chuck & I spent about 5 hours plus in the boat on both Wednesday & Thursday. On Friday, we were joined by our brother Paul and our nephew Tyler. Chuck resides in the bay area of California, Paul resides in Winona, Mn and Tyler, who is a senior in high school, resides in the Dallas, Texas area.

My eldest brothers Chuck and Dennis are the two people who I owe the most in regards to my love for fishing. Especially fishing for walleyes!
After they left for college and after they graduated from the UW, both would stop by the farm and pick me up on their way to the Wisconsin river or Lake Wisconsin. In the early days, we spent considerable time fishing from shore along the Wisconsin river. Later on, after they aquired boats, we fished below the dams at Prairie du Sac and the Dells. In the summer, we also targeted Lake Wisconsin heavily. Wednesday & Thursday was my chance to take Chuck fishing for a change. Forty years later isn’t to late is it?
We had to break ice & clear it away from the areas we wanted to fish on those first two days. That may sound a bit funny, but that is exactly what we did. One of the best tricks I’ve ever learned is how to use my 18′ lund boat to clear ice and extend our open water season another week or two.
We keep our presentations on the slow side. This time of the year, dragging paddletails is about as subtle as it gets. If the paddle on the end of the the paddletail is wiggling, that’s more than enough action to entice a bite.
Even though the overnight temperatures had dropped down to 15 degrees, Wednesday afternoon temperatures topped out at about 40 degrees. Factor in the total lack of wind, zero cloud cover and what we ended up with was a really nice day for this time of the year. It has probably been 20 years since the last time Chuck and I shared a boat. We could not have asked for a better day for this time of the year.
Darkness finally forced us off the water but we had a pretty productive five hours of fishing. We tallied up a total of 13 saugers & one walleye. Two saugers were over the 20″ mark, five were in the legal, keeper size range and the rest were shorts.

On Thursday, Chuck & I found the fishing to be quite a bit tougher. Although the fish we did catch were of better quality overall. We did not catch a shortie today. Everything was 18″ or better. We ended the day with only five fish. Our best was a 25″ plus saugeye. One other sauger went a bit over 22 inches and the other three were all between 18-19 inches long.
The fish we found were also deeper. Yesterday, our best depths were in the 21-23′ deep areas. Today, we found them in 27-32′ of water.
With the cloud cover today, we found there color preference also changed. Yesterday, when it was sunny, our best paddletail colors were chartreuse pepper & blue/pearl tail. Today our best color by far was the electric blue/pearl tail.

Friday was our best day on the water as far as numbers go. The west winds that blew in the day before continued through out the night. This was a good thing because they kept the open water areas from freezing over. Even better yet, they had let up some making boat control much easier today.
We arrived at around 11:00am and not more than 10 minutes after dropping lines, Paul & Tyler were battling a double. It could have been a triple but Chuck lost his fish. Paul’s first fish of the day was a dandy 22 inch sauger and Tyler pulled in a real nice 17″ sauger. A couple more legals came in soon after before the bite slowed. That’s kind of how the rest of the day went as well. We would get some steady action, then things would slow down for awhile.
Our best depths changed through out the course of the day. Early on, we did best in 30′ of water or more. But with bright sunshine, it appeared as though active fish began to move into somewhat shallower water and we began to catch more fish in the 23′ to 25′ deep sections.
Paddletails tipped with minnow were our hot bait once again and fishing them slow was the key to getting bit. That and changing baits often to find the right color patterns.
Today with a full boat, we tallied up a total of 20 walleyes & saugers. Four of them were over 20″ long, ten were in the legal slot range and the rest were shorts.
On all three days, we used H20 precision jigs rigged with 3.25″ paddletails from B’Fish’N Tackle company.
Our best color on the dark days was electric blue and on the sunny days we did good on chartreuse pepper, blue/pearl tail and firecracker/chartreuse tail.

Fishing for walleyes & saugers with family was a great way to spend a few days over the Thanksgiving day holiday. It would be nice if we could do it every year. Some years though, (like last year) mother nature wins out and keeps us off the water.