Final Somo Lake Report

[JimL]

Well, we were up from 8/6 until today. The weather really messed with the fishing. It was hot and stormy when we got up and then we had two fronts come through that dropped the surface temps from over 80 down to 71. There were some very slow days where we had little to no action which became discouraging at times. We also had a couple of windy days.

I never fished Somo Lake before as we had stayed on Jersey Flowage for the past 18-20 years. First, I can say the numbers of musky in Somo are WAY better than on Jersey. I got my personal best 39 inches (caught and released) on Friday morning. I had lost a few over 40 on Jersey over the years, but we rarely had musky action like we did on Somo.

Musky- we got 8 from 15 inches on up to 39. Most were upper 20's with only two over 30. All nice fat healthy fish. The two largest fish came on a Mepps #5. I only had follows on larger bucktails and musky surface baits. I got my 39 incher and then my dad had a similar size fish launch itself out of the water swiping at his lure on the very next cast. I wish that we would have had that guy hook up.

Northern- The week started good with a 27 and a 34 incher in the first few hours. We caught a few others in the upper 20's and also had a few little guys. The pike action is much slower than on Jersey, but that is probably due to the musky population. On Jersey it was not unusual to have 20 fish days and there was size. My largest there was 38 inches and two 36 inchers over the years.

Largemouth- We caught a few on spinner baits and Mepps. They ranged from about 13-16 inches. Good healthy fish and good fighters for largemouth.

We caught no smallies and did not really fish for walleye. It is too bad there is not more smallies in the lake. Also, cabbage weed beds were not as abundant as I would have thought. We will probably give this lake another try next year in June. We would like to see more action on the non musky front, but overall it was a good trip considering the weather.