Wisconsin Rapids Ice Fishing

[gheenz]

Anyone know good lakes in this general area that are good for ice fishing sepcifically walleyes, crappies, and pike. Any help would be appreciated don't need GPS coordinates. Im new to the area so anything would be helpful.

[CRF]

I do more open water fishing than ice fishing but check out HotSpotOutdoors.com, search the Wisconsin fishing reports for Petenwell, Nepco, Dexter. Petenwell is your best bet for walleye. Dexter and Nepco both have a good amount of crappies, but their size is usually smaller than the ones from the river. Lake Wazeecha will also produce a few walleyes.

[gheenz]

Another question for you. Do you keep fish out of the river? or catch and release only? I have heard mixed things and don't know which way to go. I appreciate the tips.

[CRF]

I primarily bass fish and release all of them. Once in a while I'll keep walleyes from the river. 15 years ago they use to have a papermill taste, but now that regulations have cleaned up the river I haven't noticed any papermill taste to them.

To add to my earlier post, all sections of the river are good for walleye. It just seems like I catch more legal fish in Petenwell than the other sections.

Also for pike lakes all of the lakes around here have plenty of them, though normally smaller. The backwaters of the river won't give you numbers, but the average size seems to be much better.

[Lunker]

I'm in Point, and icefish mostly on the WI river backwaters. I do fish the lakes in Portage County(not too far from you), but the lakes in this area of the state don't seem to have a great size structure for panfish and crappies. And not too many lakes with good populations of walleyes either. The pike fishing can be good on the lakes, but tend to be on the small size, and of course there is pretty strict length limits in this area of the state.