Lake Wisconsin Late Spring Walleye Fishing

Last year at this time we were experiencing the best bite I’ve ever seen on Lake Wisconsin. This year however, the bite has been anything but easy.
For whatever reason, we just have not been able to get on them consistently. Be it weather related or other factors, it just has not gone well for my boat so far this year.
This weekend we finally found some hungry fish and had some fun with some decent size walleyes for a change. No monsters to speak of, just nice eaten size fish with one good one and several more shorties mixed in.

The hot ticket for us could not have been much easier and that’s just what I needed for a change. A half crawler threaded on a 1/8oz Draggin Jig from B’Fish’N Tackle took all our fish on this morning. I did play around with a ring worm for a little while but didn’t have any takers.
I also did a little fishing myself but most of my time was occupied with netting fish, unhooking fish or retying a line or two here and there.
That’s also just the way I like it!

My guest on this day were a couple of engineering students from the University of Wisconsin College of Engineering. Ed Merchant and Darren Vandenberg work as student helpers in the student shop for the College of Engineering. I work in the Instrument Shop and help out as needed in the student shop so I get to see these two guys around fairly often. They found out a while back that I do quite a bit of fishing and ask if they could come along sometime.
Bailey likes to fish and since she is Ed’s girlfriend, she got a free pass to come along as well.
Normally I only donate trips to veterans of war, but these guys struck me as solid, hard working, salt of the earth young adults. Being full time college students, I knew they didn’t get many opportunities to experience walleye fishing the way many of us do. So, they got a free trip on my behalf with the only requirement being that they pass on a good deed to someone else.

Our technique for catching these fish could not have been much easier. As I said above, a 1/8oz Draggin Jig tipped with a half crawler worked great. We simply made a short cast out and then let the wind & current push the boat across the area where we were catching fish. The bow mount electric was used to correct our course and to avoid collisions with other boats.
Our best color by far was gold followed by blue and orange. I don’t believe we caught any walleyes on anything other than those three colors.
We ended the morning with six keepers, one slot walleye (25 inches) and quite a few more shorties in that 13-14″ range.
All the keepers were cleaned and sent home with the guys for a fish fry. For many of us, a fish fry is no big deal and we generally get to enjoy one pretty much whenever we like. Not so for these guys.
I’m pretty confident none of these fish will be wasted!

As for the walleyes finally cooperating, it couldn’t have happened at a better time!