St. Germain Fishing Reports

Again this year I'll be providing visitors to the St. Germain area with fishing reports for the Chamber of Commerce. If you're already a regular guy checking this site often, there's no need to look further as I will repost my report here. If you're a frequent visitor to the St. Germain area or to the Chamber site that's great and you'll find a link at the bottom of each report to bring you right back here. Here's the report I posted this week:

Surprise, surprise, we have open water very early this year. The ice on most of the area lakes disappeared on March 21 - 22. This is considerably earlier than anyone I’ve talked to can remember. So the good news is that you can get out on your favorite lake and try for some panfish. Remember that gamefish season is not open yet so you’ll have to let any of those walleye, bass, pike, or muskies go. A word to the wise to not attempt to “perch fish” with typical gamefish gear. The wardens watch what you are doing and will cite you if they feel the intent is to catch gamefish. Play by the rules and have some fun with those panfish until gamefish opener.

If you want to catch some walleye legally a short trip down to the Wisconsin River below Tomahawk is a possibility and frequently fun. I did that this past weekend and had fun catching and releasing a good number of walleyes with a bonus smallmouth and pike in a few hour outing. We use 1/16 oz. jigs with either a live fathead minnow or Gulp artificial minnow. Bring plenty of jigs because you WILL lose a bunch in the numerous rocks and snags.

Speaking of the open water, this would be a good time to get the boat out and do any spring cleaning, charging the batteries, reloading your safety gear and take a little shakedown cruise. It’s always nice to have any bugs worked out before you want to go on your first outing of the year.

As we go along and get closer to the fishing opener we’ll get more reports in for you. This could be very interesting for walleye anglers as the fish are spawning now and I’m quite certain will be well done by the time opener hits. Keep posted and I’ll do my best to keep you in the loop.