Wausau Area fishing report

It’s hard to believe Halloween is right around the corner – it seems like only yesterday that football season was just beginning! With only 6 weeks of autumn left, hunting and late season fishing opportunities are in full swing. It has certainly been an interesting autumn, marked with odd weather patterns but also some excellent windows of fishing success.

While the bulk of the attention by autumn anglers is generally directed towards walleye and muskies, crappies remain available for those still looking to score on these papermouths. With the arrival of consistently cold weather and water temperatures, the fish have schooled up, often in large numbers, and are relating to deeper holes and breaks. This is a time of year when good electronics are worth their weight in gold, as identifying areas holding fish prior to wetting a line can save hours of fruitless time. Crappies typically school in vertical columns; as such, look for this when watching your locator. Once crappies have been located, slip-bobbers, casting small jigs, and dead-sticks have all been catching fish.

On the opposite end of the size spectrum scale is my favorite fish to pursue, the mighty musky. As of this writing, there has been a good deal of fish quite shallow, and easily accessible to anglers looking to cast. Jerkbaits, both diver and glider styles, have both been working. Be sure to have both types with, and let the fish tell you which presentation they are most interested. Where vegetation is present, work both the inner and outer edges, making sure to be precise with your casts. Rocky areas, where present, are very good especially in the early morning and evening as they hold heat from the sun.

If you are not moving fish shallow, especially during adverse weather conditions such as recent cold fronts, slide your boat deeper and work the adjoining breaklines. Live suckers on quick strike rigs have been an excellent option for this type of fishing. Be sure and stagger the depths of your sucker sets to “comb” the water column under and around the boat. Large spinnerbaits such as the Thumper and Thumper Jr. by local lure manufacturer Esox Edge, have worked well when slow-rolled down the breaklines; twitching deep diving crankbaits such as Depthraiders has also worked well.

Small sucker minnows and chubs, whether worked on live bait rigs or jigs, have been producing mixed bag catches of smallmouth bass, walleyes, and northern pike. The best areas have been below local dams or in the deeper holes on area rivers and flowages, or deeper hard bottomed stretches of river channel.

Tight lines,