Labor Day

Walleye fishing has been pretty good on the chain in the last couple of weeks. The bite has switched over to minnows primarily although some fish are still taking some crawlers. For awhile it has been harder to find nice fish but with the water temps starting to fall slightly the average size has been increasing slightly. Now that some of the pressure is gone with the summer coming to an end I have been finding good action on some of the cribs and brushpiles in the chain. During the summer these get so much fishing pressure that it can be hard for the numbers to build up on them before someone comes and cleans them out again.
The musky bite for me has been real good lately. Numbers of 30-40" fish have been taken in the last couple of weeks. All of the fish in my boat have come on surface baits and bucktails. The water temperatures have fallen to around 70 and this has sparked a good shallow bite. I always check deeper water and haven't found many active fish lately. Yesterday morning my fishing partner and I each caught 37 inchers on top waters. We raised one more fish on the surface and two more on mid sized bucktails. My fish was caught on about the tenth figure eight after seeing the fish follow but not seeing it again until it bit. I heard of a 48 caught on the surface this week so bigger fish can be taken shallow at this time as well.
I haven't targeted crappie at all yet this fall but have been taking a few nice ones on cribs with slip bobbers and fatheads while looking for walleye. They should soon be headed deep when the water temps really start to decline.