Sept 18 Fishing Report

Sept 18, 2011 Fishing report

Hi folks.

Well fall is definitely approaching here in the northwoods and things are beginning to change rapidly. A big cold spell hit us this past week and we are beginning to see a lot of changes taking place in our fishing. Water temps have dropped 10 degrees during the past 6 days and now seem to be holding fairly steady at about 61. Fish are beginning to transition in their food sources as we have been catching multi-species of fish on a lot of different bait. Yesterday, while we were out we caught a little bit of everything using nightcrawlers, leeches, fathead minnows and fathead chubs. As you can see, fish don’t quite know what they want to settle in on just yet. They are also beginning to move into different types of structure. We are beginning to see those fish moving into deeper timber and rocks. Hopefully we keep this cold weather going and let’s get on with turnover. Once this happens, the walleye fishing should become pretty predictable. We still seem to be running a couple of weeks behind, as we have all season long. So I’m kind of looking at turnover happening at the end of the month – even early October. In the meantime, you’ll just have to take a variety of bait and fish a lot of different area.

MUSKY fishing has definitely picked up. It just seems to be getting better and better as time goes on. I’ve been finding fish in shallow to mid-range weeds with large jerk baits, rubber and big bucktails performing pretty well. Fish have become much more aggressive and strikes have been pretty impressive. We are also seeing sucker activity on the rise. I’ve been able to catch one just about every trip out on a sucker. The hits on these have also been very aggressive. If we keep our cold temperatures we should see the musky activity continue to increase daily. If you’re coming up in the next week look for some pretty good musky action.

We are beginning to see a little bit of fall crappie action taking place now as we’ve been finding these fish mainly on area flowages and fishing heavy timber in the 11 to 13 ft. range. Jigs tipped with fathead minnows or nightcrawlers have been working pretty well when going after these tasty treats.

Good luck fishing.
Jeff Winters www.jeffsguideservice.com

Are there going to be any problems getting suckers this year? We are coming up to Boulder Junction in early October and last year it was real hard to find any suckers.

I heard they are still having problems, although not quite as bad as last year.