Last week I headed to the Birchwood, WI area on a trip that I was informed “would not be a fishing vacation.” To which I replied, “Is there any other kind of vacation?” Maybe a hunting vacation, but either way, I was going to make the most of what time I did have out there to wet a line, primarily on Red Cedar Lake which is rumored to have a pretty decent smallmouth population. I call them rumors, but this information was passed to me by some of IDO’s finest, namely Gregg Kizewski and Jerry Brink. Both of whom, by the information they shared, earned a lot of respect from myself as it was readily apparent they knew what they were doing. Gregg had offered to “take the edge off” and fish with me for a day, as I’d never fished the lake before. That said, I did come into the game a bit studied up after recently acquiring the Wisconsin Edition of the Contour Elite software from Strategic Fishing Systems – http://www.plantocatch.com/. I’d even saved some screen captures to my phone for reference out on the water. My plan to was to keep both ears open while fishing with Gregg, and hopefully with the help of the Contour Elite, apply what I’d learned to other parts of the lake.
Learn I did. For anyone who’s not familiar with their Humminbird Side Imaging system, or someone who just needs a good run-through on sonar in-general, Gregg’s services are second-to-none! The man is a virtual plethora of all things fishing, most of all bass-fishing, and sonar/side-imaging is one of the sharpest tools in his shed. Most of our our smallies we found on shallow humps and bumps in 10-16FOW. Finding biters that day was another story, but we worked hard, and eventually put a few fish in the boat, including a walleye I snagged while drop-shotting – go figure. Like a walleye, the smallies were staged on the upper portion of the hump, towards the wind-blown sides, and what a wind there was. We continued to check out spots until the trolling motor broke (I told you he fishes hard), and then parted ways with at least this person being much obliged and honored to share the boat with him. Thank you Gregg.
3:30AM the following morning. How can anyone sleep when there’s fish to find? It took some doing to get everything ready and launch pre-dawn, but it was worth it. The previous night I’d done some map work with my new-found information from Gregg, and put the Contour Elite to work. There was one hump in particular that day which was more productive than all others combined, so I’d start there, and use what I’d found from the software to fish nearby. As the Contour Elite map laid out, a virtual “milk-run” of smallie spots emerged all within a ¼ mile of one-another. I’d simply work outwards looking for what biting fish I could find, and if I happened to fall off the break a little, maybe just maybe an eye would inhale the tube jigs I was fishing? Fish of both species were found immediately, both where we left them the previous day, and more impressively, nearby in similar locations that the Contour Elite found the night before. Though I was without the most recent Lakemaster chip for Wisconsin which had the Hi-definition contours, I had uploaded the GPS locations on a blank SD card for import into my boat GPS/Sonar.
The rest of the trip was cut very short by some boat bearing/axle issues, which had me staying close to the cabin, and far from the fish. That said, we did get out another two or three times in search of both walleyes and panfish. Both were fairly cooperative, with most of our eyes being below the 18” minimum for this body of water, and only a handful of fish being over. We stayed moving and chose to pull leeches and crawlers on spinner rigs, with hammered silver and chartreuse/red being our best colors. Surprisingly, bluegills were found in many of the locations the Contour Elite software highlighted for smallmouth – windblown hump-edges in 10-12FOW. Weeds were present in all of our better panfish spots, with the crappies being active only the last half hour of light or so. 1/16 oz jigheads tipped with small curly-tail grubs fished below bobbers were the hot item. White or yellow tails produced even results, and keeping the tail moving ever so slightly enticed these fish from the edges of lily pads and red cabbage they were hunkered down in. Both bluegills and crappies were fewer in number than I would’ve liked, yet quality in size, helping to make up for their lack in numbers. The best gill we caught actually fell to a leech on a spinner rig being pulled at 1.4 mph. 
I love new adventures, and this was one of them from beginning to end. Thanks Gregg and Jerry for the help, I look forward to heading that direction again!
Joel