2016/07/25 - Fishing Report - Turtle Flambeau Flowage - Mercer Wisconsin - Jeff Robl
7/25/16 @ 11:04 PM
FISHING REPORT
MOON PHASE (64%)
Waning Gibbous
CONDITIONS
Sunny
AIR TEMP
76° - 80° F
WATER TEMP
71° - 75° F
Way behind on getting a fishing report out, started one last night when I got a distressed phone call from son Tom who wiped out on his dirt bike and broke his leg. Son Jack and I were quickly dispatched and found him, Jack (strong as an ox) carried him over his shoulder down the trail to my truck. Have been very busy fishing, spent my day off today at the hospital in Marshfield.
And for the fishing... The walleye bite can best be described as inconsistent, some days the bite is pretty good and other days very slow. We have been working a variety of structure to catch walleyes, have caught them on 10-12' humps, deeper wood on the edge of channels and on a few occasions deep rocks. We have on some days the last couple of weeks caught our best fish both smb, pike and walleyes in weeds. Weeds make up a pretty small component of the structure fished on the tff, most of the summer action is wood related but we have caught fish in coon tail, narrow leaf pondweed and cabbage. It is sometimes a wonder that you can catch fish in the weeds, with all the other competition. With polarized glasses you can often see big schools of young of the year perch and other minnows. One thing I have noticed , the fish in the weeds hit hard and once hooked really fight in the shallow water.
The smallmouth bass fishing most days has been good to very good, not numbers like early June but decent fishing. A lot of the smb are coming off of wood structure in the 6-10' range sometimes targeting individual large diameter stumps. catching them casting, and on bobbers but dead sticks with leeches catching a lot of the fish. A good percentage of the fish the last week were in the 14-18" slot, too big to keep, occasionally keeping a few 13-13-3/4" fish.
The perch, bluegills and occasional crappies have been caught on all of the above structure. When we get on a spot that I feel has a number of panfish on it, I trim the bristles on the slow fall jigs with a side cutter just in front of the hook. Instead of dropping the rod tip at the hit of a walleye bite, hold the rod at about a 60* angle with tension on the line, when (and if) the "machine gun bite" turns into steady tension set the hook as fast as you can. The big perch and bluegills are as challenging and as fun to catch as jigging for walleyes.
Haven't had the call in the last week or so but I'm sure pike could be caught with spinners and whatever else you want to throw at them in quiet weedy bays with wood on the shore lines.
This past Thursday I fished with George and his brother, Marty, the walleyes were slow but we had fun with the bass, George's favorite. At shore lunch time we tooled around the picnic sites on long island and found them all full, we drove down to r-5 a site I like a lot. George was flabbergasted when we got there, (his 52nd year fishing the TFF) a nice summer day, not a single boat anywhere to be seen on the "big water". I told him it's been a pretty common scene the last month, lot of campers but not many people fishing.
Most all day trips we're getting a nice mixed bag of fish.
.....the house is quiet, back to Marshfield tomorrow, I have the cordless drills but no titanium screws in the garage, I guess that's best left to the doctors.
Nisif how do you view any private messages on the new format? I do like it better but haven't figured that out.
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