Shocking walleyes and musky

Hi everyone,

Last night I helped with the DNR shocking crew of Max Wolter and Scott Braden. Also helping out was David Staber who has a cabin on Crane. We started our adventure at 8 P.M.on a blustery night with winds screaming out of the North at 15-20 M.P.H. making it imperative to get out of the waves to successfully be able to see the fish and to be able to stand up to net them. We had heavy cloud cover with a constant mist being blown into our faces with 40 degree air temps. A perfect night! But we did net many, many walleyes, LGM. bass and even a few smallies and we did manage 1 musky. The musky was 19" and had a pit tag which Max was able to record the # from his handy little gizmo. The pit tag program has proven to be very successful.

When we finished, we had shocked almost 4 miles of shore line on the West side and netted up well over 100 walleyes lots of LGM bass and a couple of smallies. We saw hundreds of crappies, perch, bluegills and northerns but did not net them as this trip was to assess the walleyes, bass, and musky populations. The majority of walleyes we netted were 5"-7" fish which meant they were naturally reproduced this spring and not stocked. The next abundant size were the 8"-12" walleyes we have been stocking the last few years. We also netted up 4 walleyes over 21" the biggest being 24". It's obvious that the 8 foot draw down last winter was successful in helping the natural reproduction of walleyes as the reports from the previous 10-15 years has shown very little natural reproduction and the extended growth walleye stocking program has proven to bolster the walleye populations by adding year classes to the system. All in all a very fruitful night with much to smile about for the future of the Chippewa Flowage. In the mean time please release walleyes under 15" to help protect our walleye fishery. Thanks. Good luck fishing everyone.

Walleyemaxx