Up and Down Weekend

Weird weather last weekend led to an inconsistent bite for me. I was on the water by 5:45 on Saturday. Dead calm conditions made for a slow bite. The wind picked up about 10 am ... and so did the bite. I picked up the two smallies below in the next 15 minutes. Then about noon the wind blew me right off the lake. Sunday I chased walleyes for about 4 hours. Picked up 6 on a deep, steep rock hump (from 55' to 25'), 4 of which were just under the 18" size limit. The other two were twin 20"s.

Duh! Why did I think of this earlier?????

A few weeks ago I picked up one of my personal best smallmouth … a chunky 5.5 lbs brute. When taking the hook out I couldn’t help but notice the tail of what looked like about a 6-7″ perch sticking out its throat. The picture I took doesn’t show the tail real well, but you can definitely see the bulge in the fishes belly. So, what should this have told me? DUH! It took a while, but it finally came to me today. The smallie bite on the rocks has slowed signifiicantly and the bite in the weeds has picked up. Also … I’m not seeing as many boats nearby when I’m out on the humps? Why not? THE PERCH HAVE MOVED OFF THE ROCKS and are now on the deep weed lines! The bigger, meat eating smallies followed them! I should have figured this out Wednesday night when I caught a couple of perch on leeches just before the smallie bite exploded at sunset! So … tomorrow morning when I hit the lake at first like … perch imitating gulp minnows on drop shots on the wind blown weed edges.

Off and On Night

Got out on Mendota yesterday at about 3:00. Really struggled to find decent fish on the rock humps. Trolled harnesses for a while and picked up my first walleye (18") on one of my own harnesses out in about 35' of water. Later moved to a weed edge and hammered the smallies. BIG fish picked up about 8:00 with a 20.5" coming in the dark at 8:20. The were real aggressive on a 4" chartreuse Gulp Minnow on the drop sot! Even picked up a chunky 12" perch on a leech.

Something New

Going to try something new today. People keep asking me if I'm catching the walleyes on Mendota using crawler harnesses? The answer is NO. But ... why do they keep asking? Especially people that know what they're doing out there. Hmmmm ... So, this afternoon I'll be dragging harnesses and bottom bouncer on the rock humps on Mendota. Started tying some up this week. We'll see how they work out!

Slow Down in Madison

The weekend was a little slower than normal. The walleye bite is still good on Mendota but the smallmouth bite was slower for me. Perch are pretty scattered right now. If you want to catch white bass ... you can usually catch as many as you want just about every day. Muskie fishing on Monona and Waubesa is slower than it was early in the summer. Murky water may have something to do with that. Nice weather this week should stabilize things again for a while. I'm looking for the smallmouth bite to pick up again. The challenge on Mendota is figuring out where they're more active ... on the rock humps or on the weed egdes. In both spots ... there are plenty of big fish to go around!

Back to Crazy

Got back out on Mendota for a few hours yesterday. Again ... amazing! The mid-day bite on that lake is incredible. Caught 2 walleyes at 23" and 27" ... and a 20" smallie. All on leeches on either slip floats or drop shots.

When in doubt ...

With the falling water temps I decided to go after muskies again this weekend. After about 3 hours of nothing (and a heart that just wasn't into it) we decided to try to find some walleyes on Waubesa. Changed gear in the boat and bought some leeches. Headed out to a rocky/gravely flat and found 2 walleyes and a bunch of nice gills. Biggest was about 10". Did the same then next day and found it even slower. So ... back to Mendota we go!

A pain in the bass!

Tough night last night. Got a few smallies and walleyes right off the bat but then the white bass took over. They were so thick we could have literally caught hundreds of them. We chose not too.