Fishing Report 6/7/09

Well the week started out good. The water was warming good until Friday when the cold came back in. I had water temps on some lakes hitting the mid 60's. Today the air temps struggled to top 50 degree. I am not sure what is going on but this movement of continuous little fronts and cold and wind and wind and more wind is making things a bit more difficult.
We continue to see muskies and some of the bigger mid 40" class are starting to show themselves. I had a client out on Tuesday that hooked into a lower 40" class fish and had the fish for a few seconds but she forgot to really set the hooks. Needless to say that fish was not put into the net. We saw a few fish but that was the only fish that wanted to eat. We are moving fish on mostly jerk baits, twitch baits and bucktails. I have moved a couple on topwater so far this season. The majority of the fish continue to be shallow, I mean less than 5 feet of water in the weeds. If we could get some consistant weather thes fish are going to snap.
Walleye have been good with the weed and crib bite being your best bite. That 6-10 foot new weed growth seems to be the best. Minnows jig combos are working good but I am starting to catch fish on leeches as well.
The smallies were the stars this week. I had clients out on Thursday and we boated a few nice eyes and then targeted smallies the rest of the day. Tube jigs or jigs and leeches or jigs and gulp alive were the best producers. Chris was able to boat his best to date with a nice 18 1/2 incher and Jason started out slow but came on later in the day ending up with a nice pair of 19 1/2 inchers. Between the 2 of them they probable boated 30 smallmouth from 16 - 19 1/2 inches. They commented on how fun they were to catch and that they never give up and keep pulling until you get them in the boat.
I hope we can get come consistant weather this next week and see a warming trend which will help fishing all the way around.

Good Fishing,

Howdy,

My wife and I recently purchased a little cabin just outside of Rhinelander off of 47 and Lake Mildred Road in Newbold Township. Scott, can you give us an idea of some really good bass (largemouth and smallmouth) lakes within say 5 miles of that area?

We have fished Flannery Lake and haven't really done much. I am told Lake Mildred is a good bass lake and it's very close to our cabin. Any others you might suggest?

I am looking for medium to smaller lakes. We canoe fish only and the bigger lakes can be a little harder to navigate for us.

Thanks in advance,
Tom

Tom,

Mildred has a good population of Smallies and would be a good canoe lake. if you go to the far end of Mildred there is a small channel that goes up into I believe it is called clear lake. It is a weeder lake and is a good largemouth lake. You might also try Alva lake, lake Hancock for largemouth, and Horsehead lake up by lake tomahawk. Give these a shot and let me know how you do. Also many of the small carry in lakes have largemouth in them and get very little fishing pressure.

Good fishing,

Hi Scott,

Thank you so much for responding. We will absolutely try those lakes you mentioned by name. You mentioned carry in lakes. Where can I find those? I am just learning the area.

Tom

The best place is from the DNR. They use to publish a book that listed, by county, all the lakes in WI. it also had the depth, how big it is, species of fish and the type of landing. If you can get this book it will help you out a buch to search out all of those little lakes that are up here.

perfect...thanks for your help Scott