Lake Wisconsin’s early summer walleyes & saugers

Not much has changed over the past week here on Lake Wisconsin. We’ve pretty much hit the peak of our early summer walleye & sauger feeding spree. This is typically when we see our most consistent and steady bite of the year. Cold weather in May & June pushed the hot June crawler bite back two weeks but it’s always better late than never.

Devin Koppe with his new personal best walleye. (26 inches)

As usual, crawler rigs behind bottom bouncers were our “go-to” technique. When that bite slowed down, dragging Precision H20 jigs tipped with a half a night crawler did the trick.
On an average five hour trip, we saw anywhere from a dozen to two dozen walleyes & saugers come over the side of the boat. The best part this past week was the number of fish over 20″ long that were caught. On two different trips, clients pulled in up to six walleyes & saugers over 20″ long. A good mix of keepers and shorties also came over the side of the boat.

Greg Cooke with a 23.5″ walleye.

The hot weather we had last week didn’t seem to hurt the fishing one bit. If anything, it actually seemed to enhance the bite.
On Sunday though, the day after the cold front finally blew thru, the bite was quite a bit tougher. We finally connected with a couple of good ones late in the morning by switching over to dragging jigs tipped with crawlers.
I never did pull out the crank baits this week. For the most part, we only took the bottom bouncers off on a few occasions.
Hey, when the fish are biting well on what you’re already using, why change to something else? It’s kind of like leaving walleyes & saugers that are already biting to go find some other fish. The only reason I would ever do that is if the ones we’re catching are smaller than what we are looking for.

Eric Cooke with a fat 22.5″ walleye.

Hopefully, this hot bite will pick up again after the cold weather we are having now passes on.
We have had a couple of good hatches of bait fish and they are growing fast. It won’t be long and they will be big enough for most predator fish to start targeting them. For now though, it appears as though these walleyes and saugers are targeting bugs & larvae down in the mud. We have actually caught a few with mud in there mouth & gills. On an average trip, it isn’t unusual to catch few bonus crappies on the crawler rigs. It was a bit surprising to see a few of those crappies with mud in there mouth and gills.
They all gotta eat though and when the fish are rooting around in the mud; a tasty crawler pulled along just above their heads must look pretty darn good!

Tyler Schmitt’s new personal best walleye went 25 inches.