Pre-Spawn Walleye Fishing at the Wisconsin Dells

Over the years, I’ve offered up a seat in my boat to quite a few different members of the IDO family. Many have wanted to come but it always seemed as though the logistics just would not work for one party or the other.
Due to extremely high water on the Mississippi, Bret Clark & Tom Donaldson (Blue Fleck) were looking to go someplace where they could chase pre-spawn walleyes without dodging full grown trees, piers and other debris. Several pm’s were fired back and forth between Bret & I, yet another offer was made to jump in my boat and despite warnings from me that the bite was pretty tough, we all agreed to go give her hell, have fun and see what happens.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that the “Have fun” part of the equation was going to be pretty easy with these two guys in the boat. And the catch fish part got off to a better start than I expected when Bret stuck a good looking, fat 21 incher while casting a firecracker chartreuse ringworm on a 1/8oz jig into 3′ of water. That was less than 20 minutes after anchoring up at the first spot.
Atta boy Bret! Having fun while you’re fishing is even easier when you’re actually catching some decent fish.
Unfortunately, the bite went south after that first fish. We re-anchored several times along different current eddies & seams, cast and lost quite a few jig @ ringworm combination’s along with a few jigs tipped with minnows, all to no avail.
We then started working our way down river while casting the shorelines, vertical jigging or dragging with various combination’s of jig colors, ringworm’s, paddle tails and anything else we though might work. Nothing did for several hours.

I decided to relocate a few miles downstream to check out some different spots that had put fish in the boat at one time or another in the past. We were all pretty much dragging jigs by this time and I think it was Bret who finally connected on a small sauger, which meant we would need to drag that stretch again. After several more runs and one or two more shorties we started moving further downstream again when Blue connected on a eaten size sauger that look like it hadn’t missed a meal in quite a while. Unfortunately, several more passes in this area didn’t produce anything of significance. Meanwhile, I was thinking about a similar spot upstream that I had blown right by to get down here. Not sure why I did that but the decision was made to go back up and drag that section.
Good decision!

Bret would later ask how come we didn’t stop here on the way down and all I could say was….. don’t know why but sure wish we had.
This spot produced several small walleyes & saugers but it also kicked out two more 20″ plus walleyes. The first good walleye of the afternoon absolutely crushed Blue’s chartreuse/orange core ringworm on a 1/8oz black precision jig head. It had the ringworm so deep down its gullet nothing but power pro was visible when we netted her. We snapped a couple quick photo’s and back in the river she went.
Bret connected shortly after on a big fish that was fighting in a manner not quite consistent with other big walleyes. He did land this dandy fish but he wouldn’t let us take a picture and before we knew it, Bret had already released the big brown specimen so that other fishermen to follow would be able to enjoy battling her someday as well. Nice job Bret! No time for pictures with a fish like that.
Finally, late in the afternoon I finally felt the distinct, “ka-thunk”, of a hard hitting walleye smacking my ringworm.
She put up a pretty good fight but Blue was right there with the net first time she popped up to the surface. Yee-Haa! Man that’s fun when a good walleye wallops a ringworm like that. She measured a shade under 24 inches but I’ll bet she was pushing well over six pounds.
The bite went south again for us after that big girl but it was getting close to quitting time anyway.
Bret & Blue, that was the most fun I’ve had in a boat in a long time! You guys are welcome on-board my rig anytime.