Late fall Lake Wisconsin walleye fishing report:

Compared to a normal fall, the walleye & sauger fishing here on Lake Wisconsin has been pretty tough.
So tough at times, that I’ve seriously considered pulling my rig to pool 4 just so I could get into some good walleye & sauger action. That pool 4 idea was especially strong after seeing some of the excellent fishing reports posted by Marty Hahn & Greg Vandemark.
This past Sunday was not one of those tough days though. Instead it was one of those days where we finally hit it just right.

The timing was especially good because this trip was pay back time. This trip was the second half of a trip swap deal that had been in the makings for a couple of years.
This past summer, Michael Collins (aka greybeard) took me & a friend out on Lake Michigan for a fantastic day of salmon fishing. Along the way, he shared freely his knowledge, skills, tricks and techniques that would have taken me many, many years to learn on my own. Hopefully, I was able to pay him back with the trip we shared today on Lake Wisconsin.

We dropped lines at about 10:00am and in less than a minute, Michael’s brother Pat had a bite. He missed that fish but it was less than a minute later and he was hooked up. That first fish of the day turned out to be a 20-1/2” sauger. We took some pictures and let it go like we normally do. Later in the day, I remember making the remark that it’s kind of funny how small a 20” sauger looks compared to one that hits the tape at 22” or better. They look even smaller when you boat several walleyes along the way that are over 26” long and 8lbs plus.

Pat caught that first fish on a purple twister tail tipped with a fathead minnow but that bait went cold after a few more fish. It took us about an hour after that to figure out the hot bait for the day was a green tiger 5/16oz precision jig combined with a firecracker/chartreuse paddletail from B’Fish’N Tackle Company. All three of us made sure we had at least one rod with that bait on it once we did figure it out though.
Later in the day as the sun slipped lower in the sky the walleyes & saugers preference switched to a black precision jig head combined with a green pepper paddletail. That combination accounted for two of our biggest walleyes on the day.
Our third best color for the day was probably a gold cracker paddletail but it was a definitely a distant third place.

Early in the day we caught several fish in that 23-25’ zone but as the day progressed, we found more and better fish in 30-35’ of water.
Moving the baits very slowly and imparting extremely little or no additional action other than what the bait produces on its own was also a big key. Simply lifting the baits slightly off the bottom and holding it steady worked the best. Lightly dragging it on the bottom did also produce some fish as well. Jigging the baits up and down at all was a sure way to “not” get bit.

We called it a day at 4:30pm and our final tally for the day was 39 fish. We had seven saugers over 20” with the biggest ones hitting the tape at 22-3/4” long. Six walleyes measured greater than 20” long with the three biggest all weighing more than 8lbs. Only four of our fish were in the keeper slot range of 15-20” long and other than Michaels nice pike, the rest were all shorties.
Considering the weather predicted for the rest of this week, this was most likely our last open water fishing trip of the year. Fishing trips like this one are few and far between.
I for one will not soon forget it!