WI Opener

[fishcast]

Anybody been out over in Wisconsin?

I'm here in WI right now and I was out fishing/camping with some friends over the weekend and had a great time. Pictured is my best bass of the weekend, a smallie from the WI river which is open for bass year round anyways and a largemouth from a neighboring water which opened Saturday.

[gritsnham]

Nice fish im jealous that I wont be able to hit the water till MN opener...

[Deitz Dittrich]

Nice work.. had to work this weekend... but hope to hit WI this coming weekend for a few hours at least. FIshing out of a yack! That looks like fun.. would be nice to get into lakes that you cant with a boat.

[Nick Kuhn]

Fish were completely shut down on our lake. Didn't see anybody catch a single fish. Marked some glued to the bottom on a gradual 10 - 20 foot break (same place they hang out all winter). Nothing had gone shallow yet and nothing had moved near the prime late spring early summer breaks. 4 of us threw everything in the box, didn't have a single strike.

[bassin]

I fished Balsam on Sunday. I have always fished it around opener but never this close to ice out because of the late ice this year. Man did the temps show it. 43 degrees on the main lake and 46 in East Balsam. I only caught fish in East. Fairly shallow too considerding how clear and cold the water is. 7-8ft.

[Nick Kuhn]

Forgot to mention main lake was 47.3 to 48.6 degrees, picked up 53 in the very shallow (<5 feet throughout) muddy bay. There weren't any fish there despite the warmth...

[fishcast]

 Originally Posted By: Deitz Dittrich

FIshing out of a yack! That looks like fun.. would be nice to get into lakes that you cant with a boat.

Yeah, its a little interesting getting used to but it is fun. And its also about the only form of water transportation that will fit in dorm rooms (the guy next door to me doesn't have a roommate so we store 3 kayaks in there)

Also, I found about 50 degrees in the WI river, and caught that smallie and others in shallow eddies near current twitching a floating rapala. Also showed a guy how to fly fish cause he got a new fly rod and he got two on clousers in the same area.

The largemouth was in a different river but where I fished its almost like a lake with a channel down the middle and the temps in shallow less than 3ft were 53 degrees. I caught that largemouth and 2 smaller ones in shallow there by casting a super fluke right up to flooded stumps which had goods holes under them for the bass, and then would deadstick it for about 10 seconds and give it a twitch and then they hit it.

[sicheneder]

i had a blast when i figured them out.. main lake 45-46, channels up to 57. i didn't catch or see any real shallow fish in the pads or wood. fish just moving up on first breaks going into spawning shallows. caught about 18 in 9 hrs. but i took 5 hrs to get first fish.

[DomW]

My buddy and I did quite well on Sunday. About 30 fish, 3 of them over 4 lbs. This one went 4-13.

[sicheneder]

so how did you get em?

[Badger]

Nice fish! Our group went to Big Chetac (in Birchwood). We ended up with 11 Walleye, several small Pike, some Smallies & Largemouth. The water was very cold (44 degrees). and lots of white caps.

[DomW]

We caught 'em in depths ranging from 6-15 feet on wacky-rigged senkos, Xcalibur rattle baits, and Rapala DT fats. Had to fish a very slow presentation with the senkos, often dead-sticking for 15-30 seconds. Weird how that will catch fish at the same time as ripping a rattle bait.

I have no idea what the water temp was, we have no electronics on our primitive rig!

[fishcast]

sounds like some people did really well, DomW thats quite the bass!

I was back out for more

lowlight in the morning a couple fish were quite aggressive this one was caught by a friend on a muskie inline spinner (both pike and muskie is open down here)

I fished a river system and the main section was about 54 and a backwater I fished mostly for largies was about 59. I caught 4 largemouth in a backwater deadsticking and light twitching super flukes through laydowns in a small backwater, and 5 small smallmouth along the slow side of current seams in the main river on the same flukes.

Heres one of the largemouth