Fishing Reports, fishing techniques, and fishing discussion on the lakes and rivers of Northeast Wisconsin, including Lake Winnebago, Lake Michigan, and the Bay of Green Bay.
Sorry for the delay in updates, but its been a busy week on the water for me! Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were spent on the Wolf River prefishing for Sunday's MWS. Thursday we caught 22 Walleyes in 3.5 hours in the afternoon cold and rain. Friday was a beautiful day which I enjoyed by myself, which resulted in around 30 Walleyes with a 21"er being the largest. I actually lost count half way through the day after a couple doubles!
Saturday I took my father and best man until 1:00 and managed another 20 Walleyes in some new areas as well as our tournament spot. For whatever reason, we had a certain stretch that consistently held larger fish than the many other areas I had fished. Considering the forecast of high winds for the tournament day, we decided to spend our prefishing time in the Wolf River, since we figured it would be the most consistent bite in these tough conditions.
Tournament day started with a brisk run across Lake Poygan into the Wolf River up to Fremont. It took nearly two hours from takeoff for us to reach our fishing spot! When we arrived, there were already 4 tournament boats fishing this stretch, which was a huge shock to me considering I had only seen one of these boats there all week! Within an hour the boats cleared out of this area, since only a couple Walleyes had been caught.
The spot started off slow for us as well, until we realized that the fish had relocated in a slightly different area than they had been all week. Once we located the fish, it was game on! In an hour we easily caught 15 Walleyes, with an 18 1/4" being the largest. We knew that we needed something over 16 1/2" if we wanted to have a decent weight. This fish helped, but we also knew that we needed another fish that big or bigger if we wanted a shot at winning! Unfortunately for us we never did get that 20"er, but our 5 fish basket was good enough for 8th place out of the field of 88 boats!
The winners had a weight of 12.08lbs, and were trolling Baby Thundersticks in 5-8 feet of water in Winneconnie to catch their fish. They also reported catching their 5 fish by 9am, which is when the West wind began blowing at 20+ mph! Second place came from the Wolf River near the mouth of the Rat River, vertical jigging and dragging jigs with nightcrawlers was the technique here.
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Our 8th place finish was taken vertical jigging 1/4 ounce and 3/8 once jigs with Shiners and Nightcrawlers in 12-18 feet of water in the Wolf River near Red Banks. Because of the long run time to reach our spot, we were only able to fish for 4 hours out of the 8 hour tournament! Had we had a little more time to fish, I really feel that we would've been able to catch another 18"+ fish!
Overall we are happy to place in the money in this tournament and look forward to the next MWS, which will be held on June 5th on Lake Winnebago out of Oshkosh.
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