Lake Puckaway is located 75 miles north of Madison , Wi. for those that do not know the area. The lake still has good portion of ice on it yet this mourning. The Fox river runs through the lake and the river heads north to Winnebago. We have been fishing in the town of Montello which is up river at the spill way dam and all thw way down to the lake . There has been several different areas of the river with migrating fish working there way up to Montello dam. The water temps are in the low 40’s in most areas of the river. The frogs are singing and that means walleyes are on the move for spawning.
The poles we are using are 6’6" and 7 foot med. lite for pitching lite jigs to the banks of the river. We are also verticle jigging as well. The jigs for pitching are 1/8th once to 1/16th once in all the various colors. I personally like the standup jigs for doing this method of pitching jigs. We are sliding the jig back to the boat with frequent pauses with the jig. Lots of the bites happen when the jig is sitting still. The jig styles of choice are the knuckleball fin-tec jigs and my home made erie stand-up jigs. We are also using hair jigs with this method and are having great success too. For verticle jigging we are going with 1/4 once jigs and ringworms and twister tails as well. All baits have been tipped with fat head minnows.
There are some good areas for pitching jigs and crank baits at night as well. The number 8’s and 10 rapalas have been producing in the husky jerk models are my favorite ones to use. We also use the hair jig at night with no minnow on it and we put some scent on for at night so we do not have to deal with minnows at night.
Some of the walleyes have spawned out all ready and some of the bigger females that we have released are tight yet with eggs. The best of the fishing is yet to come as of when all the ice is off the lake , another group will come up river. The south shore is a great spot for casting the cranks at night while wading from shore. We also have a spot downtown Montello where you can take a spot lite in the closed area and shine the walleyes in 2 feet of water when they are up spawning. What a site to see a 29 incher like we saw last night getting nudge by a smaller male.
From Jeff
Looks like a great meal Jeff.
Thanks for the report!
Good report Jeff!
Looks like a fish fry in the making.
Thanks guys.
From Jeff
Jeff,
Good to see things are getting started on your lake. Will be interesting to see how the catching goes this spring after the fish kill Puckaway suffered last summer at the hands of the commercial fisherman.