2007 Weekly Reports

Weekend report for April 28 & 29th

It's the last weekend of April and chances are, if you went fishing on Lake Wisconsin, you were probably chasing crappies. Yes, there was a big bass tournament on Saturday, and a much smaller walleye tournament on Sunday, but for the average fisherman, catching some spring crappies was the goal.

Saturday morning temperatures were a chilly 43 degrees at 8:00am as I headed for the lake with the boat in tow to meet Tom and Todd Pike for a half day of crappie fishing. Typically, I see the crappie bite improve dramatically as the day warms up on chilly mornings like this so we were in no hurry to hit the lake bright & early this morning. And true to form, the first few hours of fishing was slow. But we did eventually see some active fish moving into the shallows as the day wore on and the water warmed up.

Surface waters in the main lake were at 55 degrees and the bays were not any warmer during the morning hours. With very sunny skies and strong, but warm westerly winds, we did see surface waters in the protected, shallower areas warm up to 59 degrees in the afternoon.

We tried the deeper water first but only managed to pull one or two fish from there. Around 11:00am, we headed to a shallow, well protected area and slowly, we saw a few more fish become active. It was a tough bite and we had to keep moving around and casting into lots of different shoreline areas to catch a few fish. Our best rig this morning was a medium fathead fished 2 to 3' below a bobber on a gold hook. The other rig we used to take a few fish was a small jig/plastic combo tipped with a waxworm.

It appeared to me as though Todd and his dad, Tom were enjoying the chance to fish together more than anything. Fish stories flowed freely making the time between bites pass quickly. These two guys already knew how to fish, they just needed someone to show them around the lake .

Despite the tough bite, they did catch some very nice crappies. Todd bested his dad on this day with a beautiful 15 incher. Congrats on that really nice fish Todd.

It was a pleasure to share my boat with you two gentleman. I always enjoy the stories that people tell while fishing. Thanks again guys!

On Sunday, Dick Majcher and his daughter Pam jumped in the boat for a day of fishing. We decided to see if any walleyes would bite for us while we waited for the sun to warm things up a bit.

Early morning air temperatures started out at 53 degrees this morning, but main lake temperatures were still holding at 55 degrees. We tried several different spots, but by 10am the only thing we put in the boat was one large redhorse carp. Needless to say, thats not what we were looking for.

So we headed off to the shallow, protected area where the guys from yesterday did the best for crappies. Surface water temperatures ran at about 58 degrees here but quite a few other crappie fisherman and women seemed to have the same idea. Dick and Pam did pull one or two crappies from this first spot, but I really wanted to try a some different spots than yesterday so we pulled out and headed to another bay.

The bay we pulled into has deep water available in the middle and shallow spawning areas around the edges. We started by working the water in the 15' depth range first. Lines with minnows and jig/plastic combo's with waxworms went right over the side of the boat and the electric trolling motor was used to keep the wind from sending us flying back out into the middle of the lake. This produced a couple of nice crappies over the next hour or two. By then, the sun was starting to get down right hot and I was actually thankfull for the strong winds.

Surface waters in the bay were beginning to creep over the 60 degree mark, so I started to work closer and closer to the shorelines. This allowed us to keep our deep lines running right below the boat and at the same time, Dick and Pam could cast a minnow below a bobber into the shallower water.

Dick is a repeat customer, and he definitely has a knack for catching fish. He used his experience to make some very nice, long cast into and around the piers and other shoreline areas where he caught several nice crappies. Pam struggled a bit with the open face spinning reels but did pretty good overall. The lines hanging directly over the side of the boat still produced a fish here and there and for the most part, those seemed to run a little larger than the shallow fish. We had to work to get them again today, but by the end of the afternoon, the lack of numbers was more than made up for with quality fish.

As always, it was pleasure fishing with you Dick! And it was a pleasure to meet and fish with you also Pam. It should be fun fishing with you again in a few weeks.

To me, it looks like the spring crappie run is really just starting here on Lake Wisconsin. If the weather holds out, the best should still be ahead of us.

I've included a picture of our three most productive lures and rigs. Colors especially can and will change on a day to day basis so don't put out just one color. Try a few different colors and let the fish tell you which one they want!

Good luck!

Boog

Door County Brown Trout fishing trip 2007

The 2007 spring brown trout fishing trip went off fine without a hitch so to speak. A few minor mishaps that cost us some lures and a dinged up prop on the Yamaha T8 trolling motor. But, other than that, everyone made it home relatively unscathed with quite a bit of fish to boot. Most of it will be used for summer grilling or it will end up in the smoker and then shared with family and friends alike with some beer or a glass of wine or two.

Nancy came up for the first two days and brought our two dogs (Finley and Kayla) with her. Dick Straub rode in my truck with the boat in tow. The first day was just for relaxing. A hike with the dogs and casting some spoons off shore was a great way for all of us to get the kinks out after a 5 hour ride up to our cabin in Baileys Harbor on the Door county peninsula.

We didn't try to get up early on the second day either. If I remember right, we hit the waters on the Green Bay side near the city of Sturgeon Bay around 9:00am. Fishing was slow for the most part but we did manage two by later in the afternoon. The bigger ran 25" long and was caught on a F7 blue rapala ran 120' behind our Off Shore planer board.

Nancy joined us later in the afternoon and she got a crack at two more fish but landed neither one. The first bit off the lure (probably a pike) and the second came off just seconds before Dick could slide the net under it.

Back at the cabin later that night, the first of several mishaps for the week occurred with out much warning. Dick had reached into one of the cupboards and pulled out several heavy pans and was turning around to ask Nancy which one we should use to cook up some vittles. Nancy had been walking over towards Dick in her bare feet when Dick lost his grip on the heaviest one and the bottom corner of the pot landed squarely in the middle of her little toe. In no time flat, her little toe was looking like a malformed piece of fruit. We finally managed to ease her pain with a large bag of ice and several 12oz liquid medicinal pain relievers. You could tell the liquid pain relievers were working fairly good by the reduced frequency with which she was yelling "Ouch"! The rest of us would have been yelling something else, but that's not her style. Dick on the other hand was sentenced to not only cooking dinner, but also cleaning up afterwards for his failure to maintain his grip on the bone crushing cooking pot, all of which he did with a rather meek and helpless look on his face.

Monday morning, April 16th Dick and I launched the boat from the landing at Peninsula State Park into Eagle Harbor near the the town of Ephraim at a bright and early 8:30am. We were trying to save our energy for later in the week when the tournament started.

Dumb move!

Blue bird skies were clear and bright, not a cloud in sight and a light wind put no more than a ripple on the water. Literally a brown trout fisherman's second worse night mare. The first being ridiculously high winds that would prevent all but the craziest nuts from even launching a boat.

On these windless, bright sunny days, you''ve got about two hours in the early morning to put some fish in the boat. After that, your just out there working on your sun tan and hoping you run across a fish that's dumber than you are.

Guess what? We found one of those big dumb fish in 45' of water at 10 minutes before noon and caught it by running a F9 blue rapala six feet behind a 1/2oz keel sinker. We set the rig to run 40' behind the planer board when this 10.8lb, 28" long brown trout hit. The next 15 minutes were pure adrenaline and the feeling carried over for several more minutes even after the fish was in the live well. Its a feeling that true fisherman can never get enough of and it keeps us coming back for more year after year.

High fives were traded and lines put back out signaled the end of one battle while anticipation over the next one began immediately. Unfortunately for us, the next fish was not going to bite today anymore despite the fact that we trolled up and down many different spots on the Green Bay side of the peninsula. We worked waters by Egg Harbor, Horse Shoe Bay and even the Monument Shoals reefs to no avail. By the end of the day, all we had to look forward to was a long boat ride back to the landing and six more days of brown trout fishing. Didn't seem all that bad really!

Tuesday was more of the same in the morning hours. We launched out of Moonlight Bay on the Michigan side of the Peninsula and despite some very light rain and a mild north wind, the morning went by without a bite.

At 10 minutes after noon though we finally hooked into another fish. This one fought straight back behind the board with no jumping and no long runs. Dick didn't seem to care at all and was enjoying the fact that something was once again pulling on the other end of the line. In much less time than it would take to land a similar size brown trout, he had pulled in a nice 27-1/4" northern..

This would turn out to be the only fish on our entire trip that was not a brown trout. That in itself is a little rare. Usually, we pull in several pike and smallies on each of these spring fishing trips despite not trying for them.

A little while later and it was my turn again. This time a chunky 23-1/2" brown tried to eat our F9 black rapala and found itself swimming around in our livewell instead.

We picked up Larry "Doc" Pakyz at the pier around 3:30PM and he waited less than and hour to pull in his first brown trout of the year. A nice fat 25 incher which also fell for a F9 black rapala trolled 120' behind the board. Later in the evening, Dick finished off the day with a 19" brown that will be perfect on the grill this summer.

Over supper that night, we all agreed that the "Flats" off the Sturgeon Bay shipping canal was the place we needed to be tomorrow. We had a couple of great days out there last year and were anxious to see if we could duplicate our previous years success.

We launched the boat around 8:30 or 9:00 am from the new boat ramp at the Stone Quarry. No one was quite ready to start getting up really early just yet I guess. That would come soon enough once the tournament started on Friday.

Air temps were in the upper 30's and would warm up to the mid-40's by the middle of the afternoon. Occasional light rain and a nice wind blew out of the north at about 15mph. We sent out six lines and started trolling over one of the trails on the GPS produced from the year before. Only one problem, the winds blew out of the south, southeast last year. Which meant that it really wasn't all that windy on the north side of the flats where we were and on top of that, surface water temperatures were running a chilly 38 degrees. We hadn't even finished our first trolling pass when the decision was made to pull all the lines. The other side of the bay would have waves running about 3' or so and they would be washing along and into the shoreline of the Potawatomi State park .The lines came up and off we went.

Sure enough we found warmer, (43 degrees) dirtier water immediately upon our arrival. Even though none of us had spent anytime trolling for brown trout along this shoreline before, the conditions before us made for a feeling of good things to come.

And come they did! Between 10:30am and 3:30PM we landed nine brown trout. Some came on flat lines run 120' behind the boards and others on the keel lines run just 40' behind the boards. We caught them out of 12' of water and we caught them out of 30' of water. On days like this, it seems like there are fish everywhere, almost daring you to put a rapala out there so they can try and tear it off the end of your line.

The biggest brown came in at 27-1/2" long and weighed 11.2lbs and the smallest was 19 inches.

What a blast when you finally get perfect weather and the fish seemed to be waiting, ready and willing. It's days like this that stay in your memory for years to come.

The only real mishap happened after the fishing had slowed down. I was trying to coax one more to take a swipe at our lures by running our lines real close to the shoreline. Even though the boat was in 13' of water, we suddenly found ourselves trolling directly over several extremely large boulders. Worse yet, they topped out just a foot or so below the surface. To late to avoid a direct hit on the trolling motor. I had taken a sharp turn away from shore in my haste to get away from those boulders, but all that did was put the three inside lines on a direct course for the same rocks we hit with the trolling motor. All three snagged up and by the time we reeled them in, not a one had a lure on it anymore. Guess big rocks are better at tearing off rapalas than brown trout are!

Doc thought I might have managed to put a little more pitch in the T8 yamaha's prop than was standard from the factory. Later we found out that he was indeed correct in that prediction.

Thursday, April 19nth and the cloudy skies and north wind from the day before were now gone. Sunny skies greeted us once again The day before the Baileys Harbor Brown Trout tournament was to begin and the weatherman was predicting sunnier skies and a change in wind direction for the next several days. This meant that our hotspot from the day before would be pretty much useless during the tournament. The winds were going to switch to the south, southeast but that wasn't suppose to happen until sometime on Friday and it would take at least a day of blowing for another good bite to set up on the opposite shoreline.

We agreed to spend a little more time fishing the hot shoreline from the day before. With the changing weather, this area would be pretty much useless by the time the tournament started tomorrow anyway. Dick was happy we did, especially after catching a trout weighing in at 9.8lbs and measuring 26 inches long. After that, only one more short fish came to the boat this morning.

Our game plan for the afternoon was to fish and learn new water. So we headed out of the shipping canal in Sturgeon Bay to fish the shorelines on the Lake Michigan side of the Peninsula. Many big fish have come from these waters in tournaments past. Some big enough to win it all. Today, we were going to find out what was out there.

What we found mostly was miles and miles of good looking structure running some what parallel to the shoreline. Out went the lines and down the shoreline we went, creating a trail that paralleled the 10' breakline as close as possible. By 3:00PM we had put two more fish in the boat. Both were good grilling size fish. Another words, they would taste good, but they weren't going to win us any money in the tournament.

The area looked good though and the winds would be hitting this shoreline tomorrow if the weatherman's predictions stayed true. So we decided to time how long it would take us to get back to our cabin starting from the moment we started to pull lines. One and a half hours later, we were back in the cabin. It was going to be and early morning tomorrow if we wanted to have our lures in the water at the break of dawn.

At 3:00am on Friday morning, everyone was up and scurrying around. Lunches and gear were loaded up and off we went. Sure enough, by the break of dawn, our lines were already in the water and by 5:45am, we had our first fish on already. A pretty nice 24-1/2 incher. A good start but we still had a ways to go. Unfortunately, the winds didn't blow and no clouds came. Bright, blue skies grew brighter by the hour and by midmorning, we had slid out to deeper water and began running our lines deeper in the ultra clear waters of Lake Michigan. By 10:30am, we could see the ripples in the sand on the bottom of the lake in 35' of water.

This was bad! Time for a new plan. We headed back over to the Sturgeon Bay flats for a little while but didn't find anything that looked good over there either. Up came the lines again and back to the boat ramp. We decided to finish off the day in Moonlight Bay where we had picked up at least one decent fish while prefishing. By the end of the end of the afternoon, we managed to pull two more grillers into the boat. Doc's fish made the board at the weigh in but none of us were sure it would stay there by the end of the tournament. The only good news was the wind finally did start to kick up out of the south, southeast by the middle of the afternoon.

Saturday morning and we were all up by 3:15am and we still managed to get all our lines in the water before the crack of dawn. We were back out on the Lake Michigan side of the Sturgeon Bay shipping canal. After and hour or so of trolling with no bites, we decided to take a chance. The structure on the map looked good a few miles down the shoreline. We never made it down that far the day before, but we felt like we needed to take a chance and go for it. Up came the lines and off we went.

Three or four miles later, we slowed down and got everything set up once again. After trolling for a mile or so, a big fish hit our 2nd line out on the starboard side and didn't stop until it had peeled off another 130' of line. The offshore planer board looked like a bobber for a while there.

To be safe, Dick and I pulled in all the other lines. Even the ones on the outside of the one where Doc was fighting the big fish. This was fairly easy to do since the fish was so far away from the boat. After a 15 minute fight, I finally slid the net under a dandy 29" long brown trout and pulled her into the boat. That put a smile on everyone's face. With the wind now blowing at about 15mph and waves running around 2 to 3', we all felt like there were more fish out there to be caught.

Unfortunately, we didn't get another hit until almost 4:00PM and even though that fished measured a very respectable 27 inches, it was quite possibly the skinniest brown trout I've ever seen.

Dang thing only weighed 6.6lbs! A few days ago Doc caught a 26-1/2" fish that tipped the scales at 10.3lbs.

We fished until 6:00PM or so and then we had to get going. By the time we got back to the weigh in station in Baileys Harbor, it would be well after dark.

The bigger fish put us in 15nth place but Docs fish from the day before was knocked off the board completely. Boy did we have our work cut out for us with only a half day to go.

The winds looked good though and I thought Sunday morning was going to be the best day of the tournament. Things can change quickly though, and little did I know that our plans were about to be changed once again.

Nancy's dad had come down with some serious medical problems and landed in the hospital. Nancy was down in Madison trying to take care of her Mom, who is in a wheel chair, and both dogs at the same time. Gut check time can come when you least expect it! She didn't really want me to come home until after the tournament, but trolling around trying to catch a big fish while your wife is busting her butt and getting stressed out wasn't going to give me any peace of mind.

The guys took it pretty well and the next morning we slept in till 7:00, then packed everything up and headed south. This years brown trout trip was over and looking back at it, we got nothing to complain about!

Joel "Boog" Ballweg

Weekend of March 31st

This past weekend the fishing was tough and the weather rough! It's been a tough spring so far for my boat. When you can only fish on weekends, your going to run into some rough, tough weather patterns.

Alex Brzozowski and his good friend Todd Ogren didn't have a lot of choice's as to when they could make the trip up here from Kenosha. This weekend was available and despite the forecast, they were coming up to go fishing come hell or high water.

These two were definitely a couple of die hard's. They spent the evenings fishing after dark below the Prairie du Sac dam. On Friday evening, Alex pulled in a 20" walleye on a stickbait and on Saturday evening, right before the storm hit, Todd pulled in a nice 22" walleye.

Unfortunately, fishing doing the day on the head waters of Lake Wisconsin wasn't quite as productive. We started out on Saturday morning with plain jigs and minnows.We also used three-ways with floaters on the upper line. Hair jigs, plastics and blades also went over the side of the boat, all unsuccessfully.

After a couple of hours trying all that stuff, with no fish to show for it, we switched over to trolling crank baits. The first fish we caught was a nice 13" crappie that hit on Todds line. He asked Alex if they should keep it and Alex said; Nah, we're after walleyes not crappies. So back in the drink it went.

A short while later, Alex pulled in a nice, fat 19-1/4" walleye which appeared to be spawned out. It was still plenty fat, but not quite as much as normal.

A few more trolling runs brought several shorties into the boat. Then Alex landed a nice 13" crappie, which by now he decided would be a good idea to keep. That didn't get Todd's immediate approval though and some friendly verbal sparring soon followed.

On the last trolling run we noticed a good size lund was stuck up on a sand bar. A couple of the guys were out of the boat, standing in water half way up to their knees, and pushing as hard as they could while the other guy was giving the trimmed up engine the gas. It looked like a 20' long boat and she was stuck pretty good. It didn't appear as though they were able to move it at all.

So we slowly motored up as close as possible, collected up the rope they tossed our way and gave them a pull off the sandbar. It took quite a bit of horse power from my 175 envinrude to get them back out to deeper water, but we did finally set them free.

We managed to get one more trolling run in before the clouds turned really dark and started rumbling. That was it for us. When it looks like lightning is inevitable, my boat leaves the fishing for somebody else.

Sunday was suppose to be the nicer of the two days this past weekend according to the weather man. That certainly wasn't the case though. The wind was blowing fairly strong from the south/southeast right away in the morning and kept getting worse as the morning grew late.

There was several spots that I had intended to hit this morning, but they were down in the lake just a little bit and that would have exposed us to the full force of the wind and waves which would have made boat control extremely difficult if not impossible. So we headed back to the spot that produced a nice walleye for Alex yesterday.That walleye by the way, did not have any eggs or milt in it.

Our first couple of trolling passes only produced shorties so we decided to move up river a bit to try another location. The new spot was a much longer trolling run but it was only good for one shortie. I decided it was best to go back down to the first spot but the closer we got to the start of our trolling run, the worse the waves got. The last one busted over the top of the bow and doused Todd pretty good. Fortunately, he was wearing some quality rain gear and didn't seem the least bit bothered by the sudden shower. Still, we all decided that trolling in 4 foot waves just didn't seem like that much fun when the fish were biting this slow. So we wrapped things up and got off the water by 11:00am. Short day but sometimes your just beating your head on the wall trying to fight mother nature.

Todd & Alex, it was fun fishing with you two. Sorry we didn't have better conditions for your first ever trip to Lake Wisconsin. Sure hope you can come back when the fish and the weather are co-operating better!

Surface water temperatures were running between 44.5 and 46 degrees Saturday and Sunday. The water was a little muddy and flowing fast, right around 9000cfs through the Dells dam. Sunday there was definitely more debris in the water from the previous nights rain.

Dan Miller has Mondays off of work and he got a chance to fish for a couple of hours this afternoon. The winds calmed down, the sun came out and it turning into a very nice afternoon on the water. Dan and his partner pulled crankbaits behind handlines, catching two nice saugers, (18 & 19" long) and three more shorties before calling it quits. Dan thought both of these two nice saugers looked as though they still had eggs in them.

Surface water temperatures rose to 47 degrees this afternoon.

If any of you out there are looking to get away from the crowds and would prefer to fish on a Monday, Dan is a licensed guides and would be more than willing to take you out for a day on the water.

Looks like ol man winter is going to make at least one more appearance this week. Weather man is predicting highs in the mid 30's and possibly some accumulation of snow Wednesday and Thursday this week. That should make for some really good night fishing if your hardy enough to stand up to the cold.

Stay warm and dry, and good luck if you go fishing!

Boog

Weekend of March 24th

Finally got out on the head waters of Lake Wisconsin this past weekend. I have not gone back and dug through my records, but it seems like about the longest we've ever had to wait for the

ice to clear enough for us to put the boat in and start chasing after spring walleyes and saugers.

Dan Miller is the fisherman with whom I shared a boat this past weekend, and it wasn't my boat either. We used Dan's boat because he's all set up for the type of fishing we planned on doing today. "Hand lining". I've never done it before. Saw plenty of people doing it. Heck I've seen Dan doing it plenty of times over the past two years here on Lake Wisconsin, and I know Dan catches lots of fish doing it too.

We had talked about getting out in his boat several times over the past year or so and today was the day. I was finally going to get a taste of what was so great about hand lining!

A half hour drive through foggy, pre-dawn, deer laden country side brought me to the doorstep of Dan's house where breakfast was already started. Eggs over easy and gravy over biscuits. Smelled pretty darn good and tasted even better. As I was eating, a thought was running through my head; maybe, I should go fishing with Dan more often?

Enough of that, it's starting to get light outside. Let's go fishing!

But after a couple of hours riding around in the back of Dan's Ranger, while working the hand line up and down to make sure the weight remained close to the bottom, we still had no fish to show for our efforts. So we moved up river and tried some jigging, which also proved to be fruitless.

Off to another spot we went and down went the hand lines once again. Another half hour or so later, I felt a pretty good tug. A short battle resembling hand to hand combat took place before one heck of a dandy sauger found itself splashing behind the boat. I wasn't quite sure if we were going to net it or just reach out and grab it, but when Dan saw how big the sauger was, he just grabbed the main line and lifted it in the boat.

Now I was smiling. There on the floor of Dan's Ranger lay the biggest, fattest sauger I've ever caught. She measured 22-3/4" long and weighed a whopping 5.5lbs! After a couple of pictures, back in the water she went.

We got right back at it and before that first run was over, we put a couple more fish in the boat on the hand lines. Dan got a shortie and I lost another 20 inch plus sauger at the boatside when I tried to lift it in like Dan did with the first one. Must be a trick to that but we agreed to net the rest after

that. Unfortunately, we only caught one more, but it was another very nice 19-3/4" sauger.

We tried several more locations, and we tried several other techniques, but they pretty much shut down for us by the end of the morning.

We fished with the hand lines in water as shallow as 10 feet and as deep as 21 feet with 13 to 16' being the best today. Surface water temperatures were running right around 43 degrees already.

Out of respect for Dan, I'm not going to tell you what lures we were pulling.

Dan is planning on doing some guiding this year. He spent the past several years fishing as a boater (pro) on the FLW Wisconsin Walleye League. He also traveled to a few other tournaments like the ones in Spring Valley, Illinois, and he fishes most of the local tournaments unless his travels take him away from the area.

Hand lining is just one of the techniques he specializes in. He is also an excellent troller and last year he put me on a great trolling bite. The fish in the side bar is one he caught from my boat while running his program last summer. A beautiful 22-1/2'' sauger! He's also an excellent blade bait fisherman in both spring and fall and doing those times of the year, if he's not pulling hand lines, then he's probably fishing a blade. On top of that, Dan is just a great guy to share a boat with. His southern hospitality really shines through making it very easy to enjoy your time on the water.

This year, when people ask me to refer them to another guide due to a busy or conflicting schedule, Dan's the guy you're going to get referred to!

But if you've been thinking about learning how to hand line, or just want to give it a try, then I highly recommend that you give Dan a call. (send me an email and I will give you his phone number)

Well that's my report for this weekend.

Dan, thanks for showing me the ropes on hand lining and thanks for putting me on my biggest sauger to date! It was a trip I won't soon forget. Next time, we take my boat!

Take care and good luck everybody!

Weekend of March 18nth

Well it looks like I've finally got everything squared away with the boat. I limped through the last two weeks of the season last year. My 175hp Evinrude developed a severe short and the net result was a dead battery right around the middle of the day on the last couple of fishing trips in 2007. It took awhile to find the problem, but it appears to be fixed now. The good fellows at Don's Marine in Lodi worked closely with representatives from Bombardier. In the end, remapping the engines computer solved the problem.

We did put the boat out on the water this past weekend below the Dells dam. Dewey Schultz and I went out on Saturday from 10am to 5:30pm and Dick Straub came along on Sunday.

Fishing was a bit slower than I would have liked, but it was really great to be back on the water.

During the morning hours, frozen foam on the surface of the water would catch your line and pull the jig or minnow rig off the bottom. This made fishing two lines at once nearly impossible. By noon though, with the sun warming things up a bit, that problem disappeared.

Dewey and I spent the morning casting ringworms on 1/8oz jigs up to the shoreline well downstream from the dam on Saturday. Last year, in the very early spring we caught some nice walleyes with this technique, but on this morning at least, that's not what they wanted.

Then we switched to slow trolling stick baits behind bottom bouncers for an hour or two. This has also produced some very nice fish for me in the past. But on this day, the walleyes were not interested.

Around 2:00pm, we moved up to the dam and began vertical jigging with a plain jig & minnow On our second line, we put 1/8oz slip sinkers ahead of a lindy rig and let out just enough line to keep the rig on the bottom, using the the electric motor to slowly work our way around the numerous 10-16' break lines and humps. It took awhile, but Dewey finally caught our first fish on a chartreuse jig tipped with a minnow. A nice, fat 21" walleye which we quickly photographed and released. Dewey popped a few more smaller fish on that rig before I finally pulled in two 15" fish on the lindy rig. A few more shorties followed them in on that same rig.

And that's pretty much the way the day ended. All fish were released today.

On Sunday, Dick and I started out at the dam using the same rigs. Things were very slow when we first arrived at around 10:30am. The lindy rig finally produced a 19-1/4" walleye and over the next hour or so, Dick and I boated several more shorties on that same rig.

We had intended to listen to the Badger men's basketball team on the radio, but when your sitting in a boat on the Wisconsin river below the Dells dam, your basically encased between steep canyon walls and reception is non-existent.

I wanted to try a few more techniques yet anyway, so we pulled up our lines and headed downstream.

First, we tried anchoring on the edge of a current eddy but since I only had one anchor in the boat, this proved futile. After a little while, you feel kind of like a bug circling the drain in a sink!

So up came the anchor and out went the bow mount trolling motor. I used a 3/8oz jig & minnow to pop our first fish while working the current seam between the main current and a back eddy. A nice 16" eaten size walleye. A little later, Dick lost a very nice fish just below the surface when the light wire hook bent out slightly during the fight. Normally, I would have been using a walleye or octopus style hook, but do to the extremely slow bite, I had switched to smaller, fine wire hooks.

A few more short fish found there way into the boat as we listened to the Badgers bow out of the NCAA tournament.

After the game, we went back to casting 1/8oz jigs tipped with various plastics to the shorelines as we drifted down stream, using the electric motor to control our drift speed. This is one of my favorite ways to catch walleyes in the early spring. Unfortunately, we didn't catch anymore walleyes on this pleasant afternoon.

It was a very peaceful and enjoyable day out there. It would have been okay if a few more fish had interrupted us, but that's fishing and we were glad to be able to spend out day on the river casting away, drifting down stream and listening to the sounds of the lower Wisconsin riverway. Ducks, cranes and other wild life mixed in with the sounds of the river.

Another open water fishing season is underway. I hope its a memorable one for all of you.

Boog

Sunday, May 20th

Dave Bishop and Chuck Markham joined me today for there first ever fishing trip on Lake Wisconsin. Walleyes and saugers were still the target and these two were pretty excited and anxious to both catch fish and to learn some things about the methods used to catch them.

A good theory that someone on the pro circuit conveyed to me a few years back was to never leave fish to find fish. So, off we went to the same area we fished the past two days.

Chilly north winds blew pretty strong and cloudy skies with a sprinkle of rain made our trip to the fishing hole a bit of a bumpy ride, but once we got there, it really wasn't to bad.

The hot trolling bite only got hotter today and we really didn't change a thing from the past two days. The only thing that was different was the number and size of the fish Dave and Chuck caught.

By the end of the day, they had there limit and caught a total of 30 walleyes and saugers. (21 walleyes and 9 saugers)

For the weekend, we pulled in a total of 69 walleyes and saugers. Not a bad weekend at all. I would love to have a whole bunch more just like that!

Thanks for choosing me to be your fishing guide Dave! Very much appreciated. You guys have a good summer and good luck fishing on Lake Winnebago this year.

Good luck out there guys and gals!

Boog

Saturday, May 19th

Randy Scott and Brian Ott had a pretty good crappie excursion with me last September.Today they were back to try out there luck on the walleyes and saugers.

The weather was a little warmer this morning but a fairly strong south wind was still blowing up some waves. Thats not really a bad thing though, it just made us keep our coats on a little longer in the morning. The skies were populated with a few more clouds than yesterday also.

We didn't bother with the jigs and crawlers or ringworms or any other plastics today. We went right to the crankbaits and the fish showed a positive response right from the start.

For most of the day, we trolled and caught fish from fairly shallow water. We went as shallow as four feet and as deep as 12 feet. And we caught at least one fish in every depth in-between.

By the end of the day, Randy and Brian had caught 11 walleyes, 14 saugers, one 15-1/2" largemouth and a bunch of other assorted Lake Wisconsin riff raff.

The biggest was a 19-1/2" sauger which was one of four keeper size walleyes and saugers.

Good to see you two again Randy and Brian. Looking forward to chasing crappies again with you two this fall.

Take care and have a good summer!

Friday, May 18th

The overnight temperatures got a bit chillier than normal and the digital thermometer on the my Toyota Tundra read 38 degrees as I made my way to the boat landing. Ed Zyga, Dan Anderson and Ted Cera were following me and all were looking forward to spending a day chasing walleyes & saugers on Lake Wisconsin.

We started out trolling crankbaits along a breakline that went from 6-12' of water and not much was showing up on the other end of the line. So, after trolling for about and hour, we switched over to working jigs & crawlers on the deeper side of the breakline. Everyone except Ed that is. He chose to work a jig tipped with a purple/chart tail ringworm. This was looking like a great choice when he nailed a very nice 20-1/2" sauger after fishing for no more than about 15 minutes. The other two guys caught a couple of small walleyes and saugers in this same area, but no one caught a legal fish and after another hour or so passed, we decided it was best to move on.

By the time we moved to the next spot, the sun was starting to warm things up fairly good. Sunny, cloudy skies and a strong south wind created small white caps which stayed with for most of the day. We caught a few more short walleyes on the jig/crawler combinations, some sheepshead and one 26" pike which came on a catalpa ringworm.

After a dead period, we went back to trolling crankbaits in 6-10' of water. The fish seemed to get more active in the early afternoon hours and we were pretty much getting at least one fish per pass for the most part. The only problem was that most of them were a bit on the short side. By the end of the afternoon, we managed only one legal sauger (18") and another walleye that went 20-1/2 inches long. Ed was lucky enough to be the guy who caught both 20-1/2" fish today. Ted was the unluckiest of the three. He had managed to real in a very nice walleye, which would have measured in at 24-25" long, right up to the back of the boat where it came unbuttoned. Perhaps the worst part was that everybody in the boat got a real good look at it. After that, Ted had to endure quite a bit of teasing which he took quite well.

The final tally for the day was 9 walleyes, 5 saugers, 1 northern, 1 crappie, a yellow bass, several white bass and of course several of the ever popular sheepshead.

It was great fishing with the three of you Ed, Dan and Ted!.

Take care and good luck fishing!

Saturday, May 12

The crappie fishing this spring was fun but I was ready to leave it behind and start chasing walleyes. I've been seeing lots of good fish pictures from quite a few of the other Lake Wisconsin walleye fisherman and it's been killing me to not be able to go after them. Today was the day I started to change all that.

I got a good tip from fishing buddy Dan Miller so off I went to troll crankbaits in the shallow water.

The boards went out at first but after a short span, I took them off in favor of two rods ran right over the side of the boat. This setup allows me to troll the contours much closer than I could while running boards. No boards allows a troller to turn sharply when following the contour lines.

Cranks were let out far enough to bang the bottom. Usually, I try to just tick the bottom here and there, but these fish seemed to be just fine with the lure dredging through the sand and mud.

By mid-morning, I had found some active fish in the 6-8' depths of water and put together a color and lure pattern that was starting to do a good job of putting a few fish in the boat. Many were small but one sauger measured in at 19-7/8 inches long. My hot spot was a small flat topping out at 5' and surrounded by water running 8-12' deep. Unfortunately, after only a few passes over this flat, several big boats ran right over the top of them in succession and that was the end of that hot spot!

So onward I went to find some other fish. I didn't find anymore really good spots like the first one, but I did pick up one more really nice sauger in the process of looking. A dandy 22-1/4" saug-a-saurus!

To be fair, I did not find this spot with out the help of Dan Miller, (aka "Tex"). I had set Dan up with a couple of clients the day before and he directed Dan Lombardi and his son to quite a few walleyes while trolling over the breakline to this flat. The biggest one they caught was a 21" walleye but they sure sounded like they were having a blast pulling in all the others when I was talking to Dan on the phone.

I needed a good place to take my clients on Sunday morning and this was it.

Thanks for tipping me off to this spot Tex. Once again, I owe you one!

Boog

Weekend of June 9th & 10th

We're going to keep the report short this week. I've got a very sore back and it isn't feeling any better when I sit here in front of the computer.

The techniques we used and the depths of water we fished in were exactly the same as the past couple of weeks. The results on the other hand were not quite as good. Thats pretty much to be expected when your faced with two straight days of bright blue skies and heavy recreational traffic.

That being said, mornings were definitely better than afternoons and the guys still put some decent fish in the boat and they took some home for the supper table as well.

Biggest walleye this weekend was a 21 incher caught by Bob Wenger while trolling crank baits and the best sauger of the weekend was also a 21 incher caught by Kevin Renolds on a night crawler rig. Several very nice sized crappies were pulled in by a couple of different guys as well.

Over two days of fishing the guys pulled in 37 walleyes & saugers of which eleven were between 15 and 21" long.

Kevin and Roger, it certainly was nice to see and fish with the two of you again. (Kevin was on his third trip and Roger took his second trip with me on Saturday morning.

Mark Nelson fished with me for the first time Saturday evening and I wanted to be sure to send him a very big "Thank You" for helping me get the kicker motor up and running again. Very much appreciated Mark!

Everett Lindsey and Bob Wenger fished with me on Sunday morning for the 3rd or 4th time. I can't remember for sure right now but as always, it was another very enjoyable trip with the two of you.

And finally, Mark Seidler and his father-in-law Jim Sawyer joined me on Sunday evening. Marks second trip and Jim's first. It was nice to meet you Jim and good to see you again also Mark.

That's it for this week. Good luck out there on the water!

Boog

Monday, June 4th - Dan Millers report

Dan spent the day fishing with Ron Hammer & Jim Buraczewski. They may not have caught the numbers that we did over the weekend, but the size of the fish they caught was much better than what we brought into the boat.

Out of the 10 walleyes and saugers they caught, 2 were over 20 inches long. Plus they had one very nice pike and a couple of dandy saugers.

They started out jigging in 12-20 feet of water with a half crawler as bait on a bare jig. That put a couple fish in the boat including the nice pike. They did some bass fishing as well, but that didn't pan out quite as well so they returned to fishing for walleyes.

The last couple hours of the day were spent trolling crankbaits and that's what put the most fish in the boat for them.

Everyone enjoyed the day fishing and at the end of the day, Dan cleaned a couple of keeper size walleye and crappie for the guys while sharing a beer and some more stories.

Sunday, June 3rd

After the day we had yesterday on Lake Wisconsin, I was really wondering if they would be just as hot today. Dewey Schultz and Kim Christians were my guest today. Dewey is a repeat client and proved his fish catching ability to me last fall when he narrowly out fished me in my own boat. Ouch!

Kim had a few tricks of his own as it turned out and I'm pretty sure he won the battle today. These two guys had never met before today, but Kim wanted to get out fishing with me and Dewey was nice enough to let him come along on this trip.

The fish were still right where we left them yesterday and there activity level was still on high. All we had to do was let out enough line so that the crankbaits would occasionally tick bottom, and they would snap it up. Most of them in the morning hours were on the small side and only a few were over the 15" minimum limit for keepers. It didn't really matter though because even when these two guys finally did get one or two that were of legal size, they just put it back in the lake anyway.

Cloudy skies would occasionally open up just enough to let a bit of sun shine through but we did have to keep a close eye on one storm that rolled through about 10:00am but we never did leave the lake.We got rained on pretty hard and the wind blew quite strong for awhile but in the end, nothing of any consequence appeared to be on its way.

After that storm blew through, we started to move around a bit. On our first pass through one area, Kim hooked up with what appeared to be a very big walleye. We even got a glimpse of this fish a couple of times and I was pretty sure it was a walleye. But after a very good battle, somehow it magically turned into a channel catfish. Dang it all! Sure did look like a walleye!

Every spot we checked had fish on it. Mostly small ones but a few over 15" here and there. When there preference for crankbaits slowed down, we switched over to the crawler rigs. The rate at which they caught fish was a bit slower, but they were still picking them up here and there.

Later in the afternoon, we switched back over to crankbaits. We were still targeting that 10-15' zone and the guys were still catching a few fish. I debated staying at that spot and hoping things would pick up again for the last few hours of the afternoon, but decided instead to try a different spot. That would prove to be my best decision of the day.

The last spot we fished wasn't really any different than all the others except in one respect. It held bigger fish and they were very active. Almost all of the fish Dewey and Kim caught over the last two hours were between 15 and 19" long.

Over the course of the day, these two guys caught 20 saugers, 31 walleyes, 2 crappies, 1 channel cat and 1 largemouth which Kim caught when his lure was hanging over the side of the boat. He set it there to net a fish for Dewey and that little bass came right up next to the boat and smacked it. Of those 51 walleyes and saugers, 13 were between 15 and 19" long. Dewey and Kim did end up keeping seven for a meal.

What an amazing two days of fishing it was. A total of 98 walleyes and sauger were brought into the boat. Twenty three of those were between 15 and 19" long. Nothing big, but lots of action!

Great to fish with you again Dewy and it was nice to meet and fish with you also Kim.

Hope all the rest of you got a chance to capitalize on the good bite. If not, better get out there and get them while there hot!

Good luck everyone!

Boog

Saturday, June 2nd

Scott Wright & Jim Linder have been friends for a long time. Scott lives in Middleton, WI and Jim lives up in Wausau, WI. Even though they live a couple of hours apart, it sounded as though they managed to get together on a pretty regular basis. Today they were spending time together in my fishing boat. Scott had planned and booked this trip back in December of 2006 and they both were more than ready to get out on the water and catch some walleyes.

Within an hour after arriving at our first spot, we got chased back off the lake by a thunder storm.

A half hour later, we left the launch site for a 2nd time and despite quite a bit of rain, we never did see or hear anymore lightning or thunder.

The fish didn't seem to be bothered in the least bit by all the bad weather activity over the past few days. We ran out enough line on the crankbaits to tick bottom in 12'-15' of water and the walleyes responded almost immediately. Some fine tuning to figure out the the best color pattern for the day was about all that we needed to do. After that, it was troll, troll, troll!

The walleyes were hot to. One after another was coming over the side of the boat. Actually, several did fall off or come off on there way into the boat but the action was steady right up till about 1:00pm or so. That's when the clouds cleared up just enough to let some hot sun shine through.

And that's when we switched over to crawler rigs. We slowed trolled them behind bottom bouncers along the same 12-15' depths. The action was slower for most of the afternoon, but the guys still managed to pull in fish on a fairly regular basis and they ended up with a nice limit of eaten size walleyes and saugers.

Looking back on it, I would say that nobody in this boat appeared to be bothered much by all the rain. It kept most of the recreational traffic at bay and it appeared to make the walleyes more active and willing to bite. The guys were sending verbal jabs back and forth as they were catching fish and in my opinion, they sure looked like they were having a great time.

For me, when I see the clients having fun and catching fish, that's about as good as it gets!

The little yellow data recording booklet that Tim Larsen sent me at the beginning of the year got another major workout today. The total for the day was 21 saugers, 26 walleyes and 3 crappies. We also caught some sheapshead and stripers, but not very many.

Scott and Jim, at your age, that's probably about as much fun as you can have while sitting in the rain. Glad you guys chose "Ballwegs Guide Service" cause I sure enjoyed spending the day fishing with the two of you.

Good luck and hope to see you guys again!

Boog

Monday, May 28th - Memorial Day

Todd Kowalski had planned this day out quite awhile back. He gave his dad a guided fishing trip with "Ballwegs Guide Service" on Lake Wisconsin for Christmas. The kind of gift that you can share with the person to whom you give it to. One thing Todd forgot about was his wedding anniversary. I'm thinking your only going to get away with that once Todd, so next time, you might want to book that trip on a different date!

The goal was to not only catch fish, but to learn some different tactics and techniques that he could take back with him to Brownsville, MN where he can hopefully, apply them to his home waters on the Mississippi river. I had already given Todd an IDA business card and after learning that his home waters were right there on the Ole Mississippi river, I did my best to explain to him that the best resource available for learning techniques that would make him a better fisherman and increase his catch was right there in his own back yard. I'm pretty sure you'll be seeing Todd Kowalski on In-Depthangling.com pretty soon.

Today we started by running crankbaits out just far enough to tick the bottom occasionally and the walleyes seemed to like that. Todd and his dad, Dale caught several before things slowed down. Next we trolled through the stump fields for and hour or so, which did not produce quite as well. Then we switched over to slow trolling night crawlers behind bottom bouncers. This produced the biggest walleye of the weekend for Todd. A nice, chunky 21-1/2" walleye. Nice fish Todd!

The rest of the day was a mix of slow trolling crawlers and faster trolling with crankbaits.

By the end of the day, Todd and Dale caught 14 walleyes, 5 saugers and 1 crappie.

For the weekend, the overall numbers looked pretty good with a total of 87 walleyes & saugers coming over the side of the boat in 4 days of fishing.

Mostly what we are seeing this year on Lake Wisconsin is an excellent 2 year old class of walleyes and these fish are running just short of the minimum legal size of 15" long. Still, there fun to catch and its good to know that the current slot limit regulations appear to be doing what there designed to do.

Hope you enjoyed you Christmas present Dale and I hope you didn't get into any trouble with your wife Todd! I had fun fishing with the two of you.

Take care and good luck fishing!

Boog

Sunday, May 27th

Tony Radcliffe and Tony & Tom Gonzales jumped in the boat today to try out their luck fishing for walleyes and saugers on Lake Wisconsin. Tony and I work together so he's heard a few stories about how good the fishing can be.

The weather was beautiful today. Sunny with no clouds at all. Well that may be fine and dandy for every recreational boater that made the trip to the lake, but for me, I would have rather had some clouds to go along with the strong southerly breeze. Thank god for that wind, otherwise I think we might have started to overheat a bit out there.

All things considered, with the bluebird skies and all, the fishing really wasn't all that bad today. The guys didn't catch a lot of keeper size fish but they did have fairly steady action through out the whole day.

Slowing trolling crawler rigs was the hot tactic again today and the guys pulled in 18 walleyes and 4 saugers plus several smallies, crappies and sheapshead.

Thanks for coming up and spending a day in the boat today guys. Hope you enjoyed the fillets Tony G. Hopefully, we can do it again sometime.

Friday, May 25th & Saturday, May 26th

Ron Mannis and his nephew Ryan Osborne joined me for two full days of fishing for walleyes and saugers on Lake Wisconsin. Ron hails from Colorado and Ryan lives in Minneapolis, MN. Last year, Ron and his brother-in-law Gene came to Lake Wisconsin in early July and had excellent success. Gene couldn't make it this year so his son Ryan came along instead.

The first day started out a little chilly, (47 degrees) but warmed up nicely with plenty of sunshine and very few clouds. Sunday was warmer in the morning, (60 degrees) but cloudy skies started spilling rain on everyone right around 11:00am. Just when most of the recreational boaters had hit the water. It didn't take long, and most of the crazy people were gone. The rain on the other hand pretty much stuck around the rest of the day.

Friday we started out jigging with crawlers and Ron and I both nailed legal fish right off the bat. But the fishing cooled off quickly after that and after and hour or so, we switched over to slow trolling crawler rigs.

Over the rest of the day and most of Saturday, these crawler rigs trolled in 10-15' of water put a bunch of fish in the boat for us ranging in size from 11 to 18" long. We also caught a few trolling crankbaits, but those fish were the same size as the ones we caught while fishing with crawlers.

By the end of the day on Saturday, Ron and Ryan had caught 30 walleyes, 29 saugers, 2 crappie, 1 bluegill and 1 perch. Most of them came while slow trolling crawlers in 10-15' of water.

Surface water temperatures range from 67 to 72 degrees on average.

It was nice to fish with you again Ron and it was a pleasure to meet and fish with you also Ryan.

Take care guys!

Saturday, August 4th

Our long awaited Salmon fishing trip finally went off without a hitch today. It was actually suppose to take place last weekend but due to high NE winds, it was canceled.

So, for the 2nd Saturday in a row, I awoke at 1:00am and began preparations for the trip to McKinley Marina in Milwaukee. It's about a 2 hour trip down I-94 and along the way I stopped to picked up fellow Lake Wisconsin fishing guide Dan "Tex" Miller and Big Sky Engineering co-worker Tony Radcliffe.

This trip was actually part of a trip swap deal between myself and Jeremy Williams.who lives in Milwaukee. Jeremy and his Dad, Jack went with me on Lake Wisconsin back in June and now we were really looking forward to joining Jeremy on his 21' Wellcraft in search of salmon on the big pond.

It's probably been 25 years since the last time I've gone salmon fishing on Lake Michigan. That would have been back in the 1980's with my older brother Dennis and his fishing buddy Pete Adler. We went out from Door county, Wi. and as I recall, J-plugs on down riggers were the hot ticket back then.

At 4:20am we arrived to a very busy McKinley Marina, met up with Jeremy and immediately boarded his boat. A very busy launch was a short distance away and a large parking lot was already filling up with trucks pulling trailers. Looking out over the Lake Michigan horizon I observed a large number of boat lights heading north well out from the harbor.With calm winds and only a light chop predicted for the morning, it was clear that we were going to be sharing the big lake with quite a few other salmon fisherman this morning.

Jeremy didn't want to mix it up with all those other fishing boats so we headed south from the harbor until we reached 60' of water where Jeremy began to put out lines in the pre-dawn darkness.

First to go out were the four down rigger lines. They went down between 35 and 55 feet with anywhere from 15 to 60' of line behind the ball. Then out went the dipsy rods with approximately 60 feet behind the dipsy. For now, six lines was all we would run. Apparently the bite can be fast and furious in the pre-dawn darkness and Jeremy didn't want to create a mess first thing in the morning. But on this morning, there wasn't going to be a pre-dawn bite and we didn't catch any fish until after the sun came up. After that, we began to pick up a fish here and a fish there.

The down riggers caught the first couple of fish which were nice eaten size Kings around the six pound range. The dipsy's also caught two or three over the next hour or so including a couple of coho's in the 4 to 5lb range. And for every fish we caught, we lost at least two or three. At one point, I know I lost three fish in a row.

About midmorning the bite really slowed down again. Jeremy started switching rigs around trying to find a combination that would work but the fish weren't interested in very much for about two hours there and when we did get a hit, it was usually gone before anyone could even grab the rod.

Jeremy steered the boat to the north and towards deeper water as the crowd up there began to thin out. When we reached 80' of water, both bait fish and game fish began to show up on the sonar and for the last hour and a half or so the bite did pick up a again.

We had two lead core rods out, one with a full core which wasn't catching anything and another with 7 colors which was doing alright. He pulled the full core and put out a suspended weight line instead and that rig did catch us a fish or two.

One down rigger rod was doing better than all the rest. At one point it took four, 4 year old Kings in a row. This rod is what they called the SWR rig. (Secret Weapon Rig) Now obviously I can't give you all the details on this rig or it would no longer be his SWR rig and it might also be the last time I ever get to go fishing with Jeremy. And that my friend, would be a real shame!

It is permissible to tell you what our hot lures for the day were though. Aqua Howie Fly's behind green or white 8" coyote flashers caught the most fish overall. Our best big fish bait by far though was a double glow aqua splatter slammer spoon. I'm not sure how many different spoons Jeremy put out before he found that one but I do know that he was working hard moving different rods in and out of the water trying to come up with things that would catch us some more fish.

Jeremy, your efforts were greatly appreciated and the three of us had a great time fishing with you. It sure was a great way to get a quick education on the techniques used to catch salmon on Lake Michigan. Thanks again for taking us out Jeremy!

As for fishing out on Lake Wisconsin, I won't be back at it again until the end of August. At that time we will be targeting crappies mostly, but expect to catch plenty of bluegills, white bass and who knows what else along the way. It should be another great fall season on Lake Wisconsin. Plenty of good dates remain, especially for late fall walleyes. If your looking for a great fishing experience, check out some of the top notch late fall walleye & sauger fishing on Lake Wisconsin.

See you on the water!

Joel "Boog" Ballweg

Saturday, July 7th

Kurt and Logan Guenther jumped in the boat bright and early this morning to try their luck at catching some Lake Wisconsin walleyes and saugers. It was a good thing we started early to because shortly after the sun came up, we struggled to put anything in the boat at all.

Kurt did catch one walleye worthy of this report though. A dandy 26-1/4 incher that hit on a crawler rig in 15' of water before the sun even started shining.

Other than that fish though, all we could manage was sheapshead, crappie, perch and white bass.

Surface water temperatures were running around 79 degrees even in the early morning hours so summer is definitely here now.

Sunday's guide trip was canceled so there is no report as I did not even hook up the boat.

After next weekend, I will be taking a short break from guiding until the end of August. I've got a very long list of things that have to be done around the house before summer is over and the only way that's going to happen is if I start getting after it.

Good luck out there and remember to drink plenty of water if you do get out in this hot weather!

Boog

Weekend of June 29th - Sorry, there is no report this week. I spent the weekend visiting family instead of fishing.

Weekend of June 23 & 24th

Fishing was not as good as it has been the past few weekends but the guys still caught some pretty nice fish. The total numbers were down considerably though.

Jeremy and Jack Williams spent Saturday morning with me learning how we troll the stump fields with out losing every crank in the box. Jeremy got the best fish of the morning with a very healthy 21" walleye.

Bob Hayes and his long time fishing buddy Rod Ives joined me for an afternoon of trolling the stump fields. Not to many walleyes were caught but they did put some nice crappies in the box.

On Sunday morning, Mike, Scott and Aaron Reemtsma got their chance to troll the stump fields and had a pretty good mix of both walleyes, saugers and crappies by the end of the morning. Scott got the best fish with a real nice 21" walleye. Nice job Scott!

Sunday afternoon, Bob Hayes and Rod Ives joined me again only this time we left the crank baits in the box and send out the crawler rigs. The guys landed three nice keepers between 16 & 19 inches, lost another one at the side of the boat and released a real fat 21 inch sauger. Rod was the lucky angler to catch that big sauger. Nice fish Rod!

Thanks guys! I very much enjoyed fishing with all of you and sure hope to see you back here on Lake Wisconsin again soon.

Jeremy, we'll be seeing you this summer yet for that Lake Michigan excursion! I gotta tell ya, I'm really looking forward to tying into some of those King Salmon out there.

Good luck this week guys and gals!

Boog

Sunday, June 17th

Well the first two days of this three day weekend had gone unbelievably well. On my way to the boat landing this morning, I was wondering if it could possibly hold out and be that good for one more day.

Today, I was going to meet up with Mike Freitag and his son Justin, who was 10 years old. Mike is a co-worker of mine and he wanted to spend some quality time fishing with his son on Fathers Day. So we met up at the Kwik Trip in Sauk City and they followed me out to the boat landing.

Shortly after, we were in the boat and on our way to yesterday's hot spot. Our plan was to troll crank baits behind planer boards. We had hoped to run at least four lines but for the first hour or so, we didn't have all four lines in for very long before a fished jumped all over our bait.

We had just settled down into our chairs after getting setup when the first fish hit and it looked like a good one. Justin grabbed the rod out of the holder and the battle began. It took him a few minutes, but eventually he reeled the big fish to within 20' of the boat where it rolled on the surface and we got our first good look at it. I could hardly believe my eyes. He had on a real nice muskie. No one had brought one of those in the boat all year. Justin finally pulled it within range of the net and we were able to bring it into the boat and snap some photo's. Mike spent a few minutes holding it along the side of the boat until she let him know that she was ready to swim away on her own. Soon after Mike explained to his son that he was one lucky guy because at the tender young age of 10, he had caught his first muskie and dad still had never caught one. A dandy 34 incher at that.

Well dad didn't have to wait much longer before he caught his first muskie. The next fish was not as big as the first, but sure enough, dad now had his first muskie. A nicely colored 25 inch long one. No muskies for the whole first half of the year and then two back to back. I never would have believed it but I didn't really have any time to think about it.

As Mike was letting out one of the lines, he had a solid hit and hooked up with what appeared to be yet another good fish. This time he reeled in a nice, chunky 29" northern pike.

This was way to strange for me to believe. Honest to god, we catch more muskie during and average year than we do pike. Maybe three muskies a year compared to zero pike in an average year. I didn't really have a lot of time to think about it though because before we could get all the lines back out, we had on another big fish. Justin took the rod this time and another long battle began. He finally won the battle and in the net was a dandy 25-1/2" walleye.

Wow, this was going to be a great day! The first four fish of the day all came within a half hour and they were all 25" long or better.

We finally got a chance to sit down in our chairs and relax a bit around 9:00am. By that time the guys had reeled in a couple more walleyes measuring 24, 23, and 20" long along with several shorties and one real nice crappie. The only legal fish was a lone 17-1/2" sauger.

With a big smile on his face, Mike asked where all the eaten size fish were. They had promised to bring a couple walleye fillets home for grandma and it wasn't looking very good right now.

Last year at this time Mike was over in Iraq serving his time in the Army National Guard. He must have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about the things he would do and share with his family when he returned back here to Wisconsin. He had already paid a $50.00 deposit and now I wanted to thank him for putting his life on the line while serving our country. So I explained to him that the rest of his trip was paid in full. He wouldn't have to worry about cleaning the fish either as I was going to do that for him also. I can't do that for every serviceman or woman out there, but I could do it for at least one of them. It may have caught him a little off guard because he seemed to be at a loss for words there for a while.

The next hour or so was kind of slow but we finally found another hot spot and the fire drill started all over again. This time practically every fish they caught was between 17-1/2 and 18-1/2" long. All saugers except for one walleye.

We finally wrapped things up at about 11:45am. The guys had caught 12 walleyes, 8 saugers, 2 muskie, 1 pike and 4 crappies. Of the 20 walleyes and saugers, eleven were between 17-1/2 and 25-1/2" long.

What a day! This will certainly be a trip that I will never forget. The smile that would not leave Justin's face said it all.

Good luck out there this week guys and gals!

Boog

Saturday, June 16th

Today I got to share my boat with a great little guy named Mason Gassman. Mason is 5 years old and along with his dad Kevin, they had a great time catching some walleyes and crappies in the early morning hours on Lake Wisconsin. After each fish was caught, he could hardly stand waiting for the next one to bite. To pass the time between bites, Mason had plenty of questions that he needed answers too. Most of them began with "Why".

Grand Dad Bob did the leg work to get this trip in motion and he wanted to bring along a total of four people. That seemed like a pretty crowded boat to me so I enlisted Dan Millers help. Bob Scardina and his son Shawn headed out with Dan to do some crank bait trolling and I took Kevin and his boy, Mason out to see if the walleyes and saugers would still hammer the crawler rigs the way they did yesterday.

Well, the difference of one day can be considerable and after a couple of hours with only one 17-1/2" sauger, plus several shorties, a few crappies and some garbage fish, I was more than happy to hear from Dan over the cell phone that the crank bait bite was hot. The guys in his boat had landed several dandy crappies, a couple of walleyes over the 20" mark and several more keeper size walleyes and saugers.

We agreed to take a break and switch a few of the guys around between boats so that grandpa could have a chance to fish with the little guy. After the break, Kevin, Shawn and I headed out to try our luck trolling cranks. Shawn had some experience behind him from the early morning practice round with Dan and in no time at all, we had the boards out with our rods rigged up and out behind the boat.

We concentrated on the 12 to 14' depths but for the first hour all we could get was a couple of short walleyes, a white bass or two and a small crappie. Dan meanwhile, had called back to report that they had landed several more decent walleyes.

Man, was I ever getting my butt kicked by Dan!

Finally, with only about 15 minutes to go before the guys morning trip would come to and end, we hooked into a good fish. Kevin started to reel in the line with the fish on while I cranked in the inside line and removed the board. I handed that rod to Shawn and instructed him to set it in the rod holder on the other side of the boat. As he was doing that, a fish hit and Shawn found himself fighting a decent fish. Just like that, we had a double going.

Shawn's fish came in first so I netted the chunky 21-1/2" walleye for him and asked him to clear the net for Kevin's fish. Meanwhile, I disconnected the board on Kevin's line. Shawn cleared the net just as Kevin's fish was getting close to the boat and I was able to slide the net under another dandy walleye. This one measured an even 26" long. Right about that time, we noticed that one of the two lines remaining on the other side of the boat had a fish on it also. That one turned out to be a 17-1/2" sauger. I'll tell you what, when I looked around the boat, there sure were a bunch of smiling faces looking back at me. Nothing like a triple to finish off the morning fishing trip!

Shortly after, Dan called in to say that Mason had caught a real nice 23" walleye as well. I do believe that Dan has photo's on his camera of all the fish they caught, including Mason's 23" walleye. Unfortunately, I was unable to get those pictures before Dan headed off to Green Bay to spend some time prefishing for a tournament up there. I will put them up when Dan gets back though so look for them in a week or two.

It sure turned out to be a fun fishing trip Bob, Shawn, Kevin and Mason. Hope we can do it again sometime! Thanks much for choosing "Ballwegs Guide Service". Dan and I sure did have fun watching you guys pull in all those nice fish!

Take care and have a good summer!

Boog

Friday, June 15th

Dwayne Schultz, my number one customer over the past three years failed to show up at the boat ramp this morning for his booked fishing trip. Fortunately for me, the two people who he invited along did show up. So after waiting for 30 minutes or so, Robin Roberts, John Kaltenburg and I all agreed that since Dewey wasn't answering his phone, we should just head out on the lake without him. Good thing we did because the fish were biting. First spot we stopped at was the only spot we fished for the entire morning. We did go back and pick up Dewey around 9:00am or so, but other than that, we never left the first spot.

With flat calm seas and a weather report that was calling for very few clouds and alot of hot sun, I had elected to go with the crawler rigs this morning. I don't know if the crank bait bite would have done as well or not, but I do know that we never went more than a few minutes before someone caught another walleye or sauger. Some pretty nice saugers too!

We slow trolled our crawler rigs behind bottom bouncers in 12-15' of water and pretty much found a few fish spread out almost everywhere along that depth. The guys had a ball picking on each other and seeing who could come up with the most or the biggest fish. I'm pretty sure that John caught the most fish including one sauger that went 20-1/2" long. Dewey on the other hand pulled in the best fish of the day when he landed a 21-1/2" sauger. Robin seemed to be just fine as long as he was catching fish, which he was.

By the end of the day, the three of them landed exactly 23 saugers and another 23 walleyes for a total of 46 fish plus a couple of crappies, perch and even a nice size bluegill.

Of those 46 walleyes and saugers, 19 of them were between 15 and 21-1/2" long. Not a bad day on the water despite the hot sunny weather.

I really enjoyed listening to and occasionally joining in on the banter between this group of long time friends. Thanks a great deal for allowing me to be your fishing guide today guys! It truly was a blast.

Boog

Weekend of October 20th

Rough, windy weather caused us to cancel our Friday fishing trip, but on Saturday, Doug Kuiper and I were able to get out in search of giant crappies. Doug didn't care how many fish we caught, he really only had one thing on his mind from the moment we left the pier at 7:00am. And that was really big crappies!

Personally, I wasn't feeling all that confident. We just went through seven or eight straight days of dark, cloudy, sometimes windy and rainy weather and this was the first day of a major cold front that pushed all that dark, stormy weather out of here. Even when the sun was still below the horizon, we could easily see there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Clear, blue brid skies prevailed through out the entire day as we went about our business.

The first stretch of shoreline we targeted produced only one or two average size crappies, a couple of sheapshead and some white bass. The second and third spots were about the same or even worse. The last spot we checked didn't kick out all that many fish either, but it did produce exactly what Doug was looking for. A very nice, fat 15-1/4" crappie which he caught on a plain old live bait rig. A thin, gold wire hook slipped lightly thru the lips of a fathead minnow with a split shot clamped on about 15" above the hook. On this day, simple was better than trying to trick them with plastics.

Congratulations on a fine catch Doug! That fish will certainly look great on your wall and provide you with great memories for years to come.

The afternoon trip did not go as well. I met up with Art Green and Kevin Grant at the boat landing as Doug was pulling his fish out of the live well. They probably had some high hopes after seeing that big crappie but we found it very hard to catch any crappies at all much less any big ones.

After several hours of trying one spot after another, the guys only had five crappies to show for their efforts so we decided to spend the last hour or two chasing walleyes. That didn't go well either and by the end of the day, we still hadn't caught a single one.

This was easily my poorest crappie fishing trip of this year. Severe cold fronts can wreak havoc on the activity level of fish and today was a perfect example of what happens when faced with severe cold front conditions. Sorry guys!

To ease the sting a bit, Art and Kevin were given the half price special and their trip today only cost them half as much as normal.

On Sunday, October 21st I met up with Perry Cowan and Jim Blaser for a full day of fishing. They wanted to target walleyes first but if that didn't pan out, then crappies would be just fine. Well, the walleyes definitely did not pan out and we covered a great deal of water looking for them. We spent some time at all the usual hotspots that everyone knows about, (like the rail road bridge) and we spent some time at quite few other spots that aren't quite as well known. We ran up into the river and found very fast, strong, dirty water up there and the wind had picked up from the south, southeast strong enough to put white caps on the lake. We didn't find any walleyes willing to cooperate though.

Around noon, we took a lunch break at Fitz's restaurant in Okee Bay. They have very good food there and it was felt good to put our feet on solid ground for a short time while we ate lunch and game planned for the afternoon.

After lunch, I noticed the sky was starting to cloud up as we headed for the crappie holes. That was good news and it gave me a bit of confidence. The first spot we stopped at did not kick out one fish after another but the guys did put several crappies in the boat using a couple of different methods.

A plain minnow on a gold hook produced a few as always. Perry caught a couple on a Charlie Brewer Slider tail on a small jig and Jim caught a couple crappies and several bluegills on a chartreuse glow spoon that resembled an ice fishing jig more than an open water lure. Perry also caught one or two on a chartruese twister tail.

On the next spot, we did even better and Perry came up with a lure I have never before seen used to catch crappies. A Jig-A-Whopper in orange, tipped with a minnow, then dropped right over the side of the boat where he jigged it gently up and down. I don't know if many of you have ever heard of that lure, but it has been around awhile. Nice job on that little trick Perry!

By the end of the afternoon, these two guy managed to catch 20 crappies on a variety of lures. We spent the last hour trying to catch a walleye but that didn't pan out.

It was fun to fish with you two Perry and Jim. You two have a good sense of humor and it was definitely fun watching the two of you go through your tackle boxes looking for different things to try.

Thats always a good way to learn.

For those of you keeping track, the surface water temperature in the main lake is now running right around 57-58 degrees. Just for the heck of it, I went back and looked at last years surface water temperatures for the month of October. In early October, the surface temperature was right around 61 degrees and by the last week of October in 2006, surface water temps had dropped all the way down to 43 degrees! Obviously, the weather last fall was a lot colder than it was this year.

Hopefully we will see some cooler weather here and a better walleye bite along with it!

Take care and good luck fishing everybody.

Boog

Saturday, October 13th

Surface water temperatures are going down once again. The lower end of the lake is a few degrees warmer than the upper end and that is pretty much normal for this time of the year. That will also hold true pretty much right up till ice up. We were fishing in 63 degree water on the lower end of the lake and only 60 degrees farther up towards the rail road bridge. This weeks weather should bring that down a little more.

Tom Mack was my client today and he wanted to learn how to catch both crappies and walleyes in the fall. We started the morning chasing crappies and they bit alright. Not great but certainly not bad either. We caught a couple of big ones but most were run of the mill between 9" and 11" long.

In the afternoon we tried for walleyes but that proved to be a much tougher sell. We spent most of our time fishing blade baits but I also left a few jigs down there along the way. Neither was working on this day. Only one 13-1/2" walleye found its way into our boat and that was caught on a B3 Blade from B' fish 'N Tackle. I was able to get my hands on several of these blades and they look really good. We're going to give them a serious work out this fall. I'm pretty sure there going to be one of my go to baits for fall walleye fishing here on Lake Wisconsin.

The good news is, due to the unseasonably warm weather, the crappies are still available if your willing to put in a little work finding them.

The bad news is, due to the unseasonably warm weather, the walleyes are still pretty slow.

It will eventually get colder out and the walleye bite will pick up as the water temperatures start to decline.

If anyone is interested, I had a cancellation for this coming Saturday so October 20th is now available once again. Give me a holler if you would like to get out and chase some crappies or walleyes.

See you on the water!

Boog

Weekend of October 6th

Warm weather continues to hang around much longer than any of us walleye fishing fanatics would like. Most of us would much rather see a slow but steady decline in both air and water tempertures.

Apparently, Mother Nature has other plans!

Sunday, October 7th and Bruce Johnston was returning for yet another crappie fishing trip this fall. This time he brought his son Brian along instead of his brother Al. The results were pretty much the same though. The crappies, bluegills and white bass were ready and willing.

Bruce brought along some Charlie Brewer boot tails to try on the crappies and they worked pretty good. Brian and I stuck with the usual plastics and they worked good also. Both of these rigs out fished the minnow rigs today. On Friday it was just the opposite and thats why its so important to bring along more than one bait and be prepared to use them both.

Surface water temperatures continue to climb and are now running at 69 degrees in the main lake. Much warmer than I would like to see!

On Friday October 5th, Rodney and Orville Bondele made the drive up from around the Wioto area to learn how we catch crappies here on Lake Wisconsin. Rodney proved to be a very quick study. He pretty much had it down within the first couple of cast and never let up the rest of the morning. Orville took a little longer to catch on but he still caught his share of crappies and bluegills.

We never did get into any big ones, just a nice bunch of average crappies that ran from 10" to 12" long. By mornings end, they had easily caught over 25 crappies along with lots of bluegills, a few white bass and of course a couple sheepshead.

Despite the warm weather, it turned out to be another nice day of fishing on Lake Wisconsin. It always is when the crappies are biting like they were today!

Boog

Saturday, September 29th

Brian Bollnow and Jim Luther jumped in my boat this past Saturday for a full day of crappie fishing.

They ended up keeping 30 crappies and four bluegills but they certainly could have kept quite a few more than that. Bluegills especially were more than willing to chomp down the 1/64oz jigs they were casting into the shallows. Most of the crappies however, came on minnows fished in the 10' to 14' depths.

Surface water temperatures are still pretty warm for the end of September. Most of the main lake was right around 67 degrees.

We didn't get any real big fish on this outing, just a nice mix of crappies, bluegills, whitebass, smallies and sheepshead.

Hope you all had a good weekend!

Boog

Weekend of September 22nd

The warmer weather that we had over the past week had a positive affect on the crappie fishing. We didn't put up huge numbers or lots of big fish but the bite was fairly steady through out the course of the day and a few big slabs showed up on the ends of our lines as well.

Those who went out for a full day were putting between 35 and 45 crappies in the boat and most of those fish measured 9 to 10 inches. I might add that all of these crappies are quite thick for there size. Along with the crappies, lots of bluegills and white bass also found there way into the boat. Many of the white bass are pretty good size fish and they do put up a real nice fight.

Sheepshead of course are still making their presence felt each day as well but the best catch of the weekend was made by Ray Zurawski who won the battle with a 19" walleye on Sunday. Normally that wouldn't be all that special of a catch, but because he was using an ultra light rod rigged with 4lb test line, landing this fish was much more difficult. Congratulations on a fine catch Ray!

Ray's wife Barb has actually been fishing much longer than Ray and she is the one who showed Ray how to fish years ago when they first met. Their children gave them this guided fishing trip to help them celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary and Barb made the most of it when she landed one of the best crappies caught by anyone in my boat this fall. After several photo's were snapped, she released it back in the waters of Lake Wisconsin. Ray and Barb both prefer to eat the average size crappies and since they were catching plenty of those, she just didn't see the point in keeping any big ones. Nice catch Barb and thanks much for releasing it!

On Saturday, Doug Kuiper and Travis Johnson spent the morning catching crappies, bluegills and white bass with me. Doug went out with me for a couple of hours last weekend and he picked up right where he left off. Travis took a little while to get the hang of it but he started to catch on as the morning wore on. Doug caught his largest crappie to date and intends to have it displayed on the wall of his office. Congratulations on a fine catch Doug!

Randy Scott has fished with me a couple of times over the past two years. His usual partner is Brian Ott, who they claim to be the sheepshead king..... baaa~baaa. Sorry Brian, they made me do it!

Doug Musser was substituting for Brian on Friday and he picked a pretty good day overall for his first ever trip to Lake Wisconsin. Aside from the wind, the fishing was pretty good. Randy and Doug put over 40 crappies in the boat.

I did see the forecast and planned ahead. The anchor, which hasn't seen the inside of my boat in a long time, was in the boat today. It took us awhile to get the anchor to hold in the spot we wanted to fish but it did finally get a good grip on the bottom. It held pretty good for about 20 minutes before the rope broke under the stress of white caps pounding the bow of the boat. That's usually a pretty good indicator that its time to move on to another spot!

We had to battle that wind for the rest of the day but when the fish are biting, tough weather conditions don't seem quite as bad.

All in all, it turned out to be a pretty good weekend and everyone enjoyed catching crappies, bluegills, white bass, sheepshead and even the occasional walleye.

Hope you all had as much fun out there as we did and if not, there's always next weekend!

Boog

Weekend of September 15th

I am going to keep this report very short. The reason why is because I'm seriously under the weather. Somebody gave me a really bad cold or the flu or something and the couch or the bed are the only places that give me any comfort at all right now.

As most of you know, we were hit with very cold temperatures on Friday night. This did make fishing for crappies a little slower than it has been over the past couple of weekends.

We still found plenty of fish and everyone left happy, but we also had to work a little harder to get those fish to bite.

Main lake temperatures were running 76 degrees last weekend but after Friday night, they are now at 65 degrees.

This pushed many of the crappies a couple of feet deeper. We still found a few fish in shallower but many of our fish came from 10' to 17' deep this week.

The exact same techniques were employed we just fished them a little deeper than normal.

That's it for now, I'm heading back to the couch to blow my nose and watch Monday night football.

Hope you all had some luck out there!

Boog

9-9-07 Sunday, Sept. 9th

This morning I had the pleasure of sharing my boat with Megan and Marty Lenss. Marty put in the winning bid for a half day gift certificate donated to the Dane County Airport's annual United Way fund raiser. The gift certificate was good for a half day of fishing and today was the day when they reaped the rewards for their generous donation to United Way of Dane County, Wisconsin.

Megan is by no means new to fishing. She has spent plenty of time fishing from a boat with her dad in northern Wisconsin. Marty and his brother like to chase muskies but when it's just the two of them, they prefer to fish for walleyes.

The first spot we stopped at was proving to be a pretty good one and despite having to use an open face spinning reel instead of the closed face one she is more accustomed to, Megan had the hot hand and was making the most of it. But Marty caught up soon enough and with both of them catching fish on a regular basis, no one seemed to care who caught the most or the biggest.

Around mid-morning things began to slow down a little and we decided to move on to another spot.

As luck would have it, plenty of fish were waiting for us there as well. All in all, the crappies and bluegills both bit much better than yesterday and these two had no trouble putting 25 nice eaten size crappies in the live well by the time we quit at a little after 11:00am.

It was a very enjoyable morning for me to be able to share my boat with these two and I'm pretty sure they will remember it for quite some time as well. Plenty of fish, lots of smiles and before we knew it the morning passed and it was time to go home.

The techniques we used were exactly the same as last week. Locations were also the same as was the depths we fished in.

This bite should last until the end of September, maybe a little more if we're lucky. I do happen to have a rare opening left this coming Sunday. (Sept. 16th) So if anyone out there feels like getting in on some of the great crappie fishing action this fall, by all means give me a call!

Boog

9-8-07 Saturday, Sept. 8th

Bruce and Al Johnston came down from northern Wisconsin to chase crappies on Lake Wisconsin with me today and the weather was quite nice. Sunny, but not way to warm. The wind could have been just a bit stronger but other than that, it turned out to be a very pleasant day.

Surface water temperatures are running a bit high for this time of year but that should definitely change with much cooler weather predicted for this week. The surface was at 76 degrees early in the morning when we first hit the water and warmed up to 80 degrees by mid-day.

The crappie bite was not as good as it was last weekend but that didn't seem to bother these two guys much. And after all, the bite last week was pretty exceptional. Bruce and Al still caught plenty of crappies and bluegills along with one tiny sauger, several sheepshead and some smallies. By the end of the day, they had managed to put 25 decent size crappies in the live well and Bruce released one big crappie also.

The guys then followed me to my place where we shared a couple of Heineken's while I cleaned up the fish for them. All in all, it was a very pleasant day on the water. That's the one thing I really love about fishing for crappies, it always seems to be a low stress endeavor. Just relax, enjoy the weather, the company and the time spent on the water catching fish!

On another note, I would like to add a very big "Thank You" to the service technicians at Don's Marine in Lodi. We had a little motor trouble out on the lake and over the phone, they were kind enough to advise me on where to look to solve the problem on my 175hp Evinrude engine. Basically, the guys at Don's Marine saved the day for me and my clients. Thanks agains guys!

Take care and good luck fishing out there!

Boog

Monday, November 26th

A couple of good fella's from Pennsylvania joined me on Lake Wisconsin today. Doug Burton moved to Beaver Dam, Wisconsin with his wife and family a few years ago. His brother-in-law, Dale Anderson was out for a visit. Both are avid fisherman and wanted to see how we do it here on Lake Wisconsin.

Unfortunately, today was probably the worst bite we've experienced all fall. Guess it had to happen sooner or later. On days like this, it can be hard to believe just how good the fishing really can be.

We hit the water a little after 10:30am and fished until dark. All we had to show for our efforts was two saugers, both over 20" long, and a couple of paddletails that had the tails bitten off.

These are the only saugers either one of these two have ever caught so I guess if they were only going to catch one each, these were the right ones. Congratulations on a couple of fine fish guys!

A look at the weather forecast makes me think that this might have been the last trip of the year. The forecast is predicting lows of 10 degrees and highs that are not going to reach above freezing for the upcoming weekend. Usually, that means skim ice will form on the surface of the lake. When that happens, it's literally impossible to keep your lure or bait down on the bottom.

If that is indeed the case, I certainly can't complain. The fall of 2007 on Lake Wisconsin will go down in the record books as one of the best ever!

Boog

Sunday, November 25th

Kevin Menard had brought most of his family on a fishing trip with me last summer. Everyone except his wife, Margie, and his oldest son Matt. Today it was Matt's turn to come along. Maybe next time we'll be able to get Margie out there too!

The fishing was definitely tougher for us today. For one, the wind was still blowing pretty hard. I don't think it ever really stopped blowing from yesterday. The three of us hopped around from one spot to another, trying to stay out of the wind and still catch some fish. All we managed for most of the afternoon was one nice 18-1/2" sauger that Kevin caught.

Finally, right around 3:30pm, we noticed that the wind had appeared to subside just a little bit. So off we went to my top spot for the past few days, which just happens to be very exposed to the wind. And even though the wind didn't by any means stop, it had indeed slowed down enough for us to effectively fish this spot.

They didn't bite right away, but over the last half hour before dark, we finally found a couple of active ones that were happy to gobble up our ringworms and paddletails. Saved by the bell basically!

We ended up with only six fish but four of them were legal size and that's what Kevin and Matt wanted the most. They really wanted to take some fish home for a tasty fish fry. One of the other two was over 20" long and the last one was a shortie.

Great to fish with you again Kevin and it was nice to finally meet you Matt!

Hope to see you again next year!

Boog

Saturday, November 24th

Windy, that's the best way to describe today's fishing trip. Windy and cold might be even better.

Card playing buddies Dick Straub, Wayne Henn and Rob Porubsky came along today in an effort to collect some walleye fillets for our annual card playing fish fry.

We went right to the program that worked so well for me yesterday and it was working just fine as long as we could control our boat speed. But today, the wind seemed determined to kick out butts and eventually, it did just that. Once that wind reach's the 30mph mark, fishing really does become nearly impossible.

We still managed to put five legal size eaters in the boat, plus four more that went over 20" long and had to be returned. Two others of the 11 caught were shorties.

Even though the weather shortened our trip today, it was nice to get out just for the fun of it for a change. We'll do it again next year guys!

Friday, November 23rd

Today's fishing trip was pretty cool, and I'm not referring to the weather which never got above freezing. Despite the cool temperatures though, a very bright and sunny sky help a great deal, and it didn't feel as cold as it really was. The clue to how cold it really was out there, was the ice that began to build up on the floor of the boat. I had washed it down to get rid of what I thought was fish slime. After washing it down, it was even more slippery than before! Guess it wasn't fish slime after all!

Now for the fishing report.

Tom & Collin Handley, from Sun Prairie, wanted to spend an afternoon fishing for walleyes and saugers on Lake Wisconsin. They picked what may have been the best day of the entire fall!

In all, these two landed 15 saugers and 1 walleye. Not really all that special by Mississippi river pool 4 standards, that much I'm fully aware of. But lets consider the size of the saugers they caught. The three biggest all measured 22-1/2" long. Another went 21-1/4" and the next was and even 20" long. That's five fish at or over 20" long. Almost one third of the fish they caught were over 20" long! To me, that's just incredible. Nice job guys!

The top baits for today were paddletails and ringworms from B'Fish'N Tackle once again. The best colors on this trip for paddletails were the following: purple/white tail, electric blue/pearl tail and chartreuse/pepper. Best ringworm color was purple/white tail.

By the way, even though Collin is only 7 years old, he handled a spinning rod & reel just fine and did a great job of keeping his line tight while fighting these fish.

It sure was fun today guys! Thanks again and hope to see you back here again next year.

Boog

Wednesday, November 21st

Eric McKenna and Dan Webster from the Lodi area braved the weather and spent the day chasing walleyes & saugers with me. Overall, the fishing was pretty slow, but the guys stuck it out and we ended up with seven saugers, all legal, and three walleyes, all short. None of our fish today went over 20" long.

Tough weather day. We had plenty of wind and by later in the afternoon, it was snowing fairly hard on us as well.

Pictured is Dan Webster with the best fish of the day. A 19-1/2" sauger. We actually caught two of them this size and another at 18-1/2" long. Even though they had seven legals, they only kept three to eat.

Thanks again guys! Despite the weather, it was fun fishing with the two of you.

Boog

Tuesday, November 20nth

I spent the morning fishing with Marcus Kembloski who is an avid bass fisherman. Marcus wants to learn how to fish walleyes and saugers also and that's why he booked this trip with me today.

This was a bit of a weird day weather wise. The morning started out with some fog and a few clouds. About an hour after sunrise, the sun was actually shining pretty brightly. Two hours later though, a front moved through bringing heavy clouds and by the time we picked up to leave, a light rain had started.

We caught about half our fish early in the morning and then one or two around mid-morning and the last three we caught by the tressle late in the morning. Ended up with nine fish total with the smallest coming in at 17 inches and the largest at 22-1/2" long. Marcus kept three for the dinner table and the rest went back in the drink.

After experiencing a hot day of fishing with paddletails and ringworms yesterday, I expected to nail them again today on those same baits. As it turned out, we caught about half of our fish on those baits and a simple jig tipped with a minnow accounted for the other half, including the biggest sauger. No fish were caught on blade baits for the 3rd day in a row.

Nice fishin with you today Marcus. If you stick with it, I think we have a chance to cure you of that bass fishing habit!

Boog

Monday, November 19nth

Dewey Schultz originally started out as a client. But after fishing together quite a few times over the last couple of years, he turned into a pretty good fishing partner and friend. Definitely one of the better things that came about from being a fishing guide!

Dewey and I always have really good trips. For some reason the walleyes, saugers or even crappies seem to be on the chew when Dewey gets in my boat.

But today it seemed, things were going to be different. We had fished hard, using a variety of different colored blades and jigs tipped with minnows but by 10:00am, the fish still wanted nothing to do with us. We thought we may have had a bite here and there but never put the hook into anything other than a couple of stumps or other bad snags.

Around 10:15am, I started playing around with a bunch of different colored paddletails and ringworms from B'Fish'N Tackle. It didn't take to long and I started to catch some nice saugers. Dewey made the switch after I caught the second fish but it took a little long for the fish to warm up to him.

The rest of the day was much different than the early morning hours were. We saw very few fish caught by any of the other boats out there today and admittedly, we did try to keep our fish catching as low key as possible. Sorry guys, but when there's that many of you out there, we just didn't feel like drawing a crowd. Especially, when we knew Big Dave had John Gillespies T.V. crew out in his boat . Apparently, they were attempting to film a segment on late fall sauger fishing for his show. I don't have any idea how it went for them because we were too busy with what was going on in our boat to pay any attention to those guys.

I have had some pretty good luck on both paddletails and ringworms in the past on Lake Wisconsin. But this year, I just couldn't get them to go real good until today. We would catch one here and another there, but never anything consistent. I think today, the fish just got tired of seeing all those blades and jigs bounced off there heads.

By the end of the day, Dewey and I had put 17 saugers and 3 walleyes in the boat. Four saugers were between 20" and 21" long and five others were between 18-1/2" and 19" long.

Guess our streak of good fishing trips isn't going to be broken just yet Dewey!

Sunday, November 18nth

This morning was sunnier, but much colder than the previous couple days. Kurt Guenther was fishing with me for the second time this year. His first time out with me was a half day trip this past June, which resulted in him catching only one fish. Fortunately, that fish was a 26" long walleye. Sometimes, it only takes one fish to make for a pretty good day.

Today, the fishing wasn't as good as it had been the past couple of days. But despite that, Kurts first fish of the day was a dandy 22-1/4" long sauger which he caught on a jig tipped with a minnow. Nice fish Kurt!

The rest of the morning didn't really go all that well though. Fish were few and far between. We ended up with only five. All except one was over 15" long but Kurt only kept one for the table.

I going to have start calling you "Big Fish Kurt". Don't seem to catch a lot but what you do sure is worth catching!

Nice to fish with you again Kurt!

Saturday, November 17nth

Marty Lenns jumped in the boat for his second fishing trip of the year with me. Marty works at the Dane County airport with my wife, Nancy, and his co-workers put their money together to purchase a half day fishing trip for him because he's such a nice guy! Ah, okay, I don't remember why they gave him a half day fishing trip, but he is a nice guy. He even bought a dozen glazer donuts to share with the guide. Apparently, they were the really lite and fluffy kind of donuts. Most of them disappeared while I was fishing from the bow of the boat. Flew out of the boat with the wind or something I guess. Man I hate when that happens!

Well anyway, didn't have a lot of time to think about it because the fish were biting this morning. I was catching them on a blade bait and Marty was catching them on a jig tipped with a minnow.

Some pretty decent saugers too! Only one over 20" but two more were 19-1/2" and two others were right at 19" long.

Later in the morning a light rain kicked up and wouldn't go away. Worse yet, the hot early morning fishing slowed down. At least it didn't quit and we were able to pick up a couple more but by 11:30am, we had seen enough and headed for the boat landing.

Our total for the morning was 12 saugers and 2 walleyes.

My one regret for the morning was that I didn't take some pictures of Marty and his 19-1/2" sauger. Normally, I only snap photo's if saugers are over 20" long. Thats a mistake on my part and I apologize for that. It would have been nice to have a shot for this report of you with a couple of those better ones you caught today.

It was great fishing with you again Marty, and thanks again for the donut!

Friday, November 16th

Spent another great day fishing with Dick Majcher and Rob Linde and not much really changed from last Sunday when we went out. Weather was about the same and so was the fishing.

We ended up with 11 saugers and 3 walleyes, five of which were kept. Three saugers were over 20" long, including one "extremely fat" 21 incher that Rob caught right at the end of the day.

Nice fish Rob!

Needless to say, Rob had the hot hand once again. Seems like this guy is on "automatic" lately. Give him a jig and a minnow bucket, then turn him loose on the saugers. After that, you better have the net ready. I hardly ever get to fish anymore with this guy in the boat. Seems like all I'm doing is netting fish for Rob!

Seriously though, I always enjoy fishing with you two. Your both dedicated and determined walleye fishermen and undoubtedly, that has a great deal to do with why you guys always seem to catch fish.

Sunday, November 11th

The last of my four day weekend was here already. How come four days of fishing always seems to go by about 3 times as fast as four days of work! Somebody should do something about that. I mean, can't they fix it so its the other way around?

Today I was once again sharing my boat with a couple of repeat customers who I very much enjoy fishing with. Dick Majcher and Rob Linde have done pretty well in their previous outings with me. Dick has done especially well and he has kind of made a habit of out fishing Rob pretty badly. Doesn't seem to matter whether we're fishing for crappies or walleyes either, Dick usually manages to put some mighty fine fish in the boat along the way. And like many good fisherman, Dick always brings along a bag full of tricks to try.

But today was going to be different. It wasn't evident early on but as the day wore on, it became increasingly evident that today, it was going to be all Rob and nothing but Rob! I did manage to sneak a fish or two in here and there, but for the most part, it was all Rob today.

I think it was that 20 year old hand painted jig that I gave him early in the day. He never took the dang thing off. At one point, after an especially nasty snag finally gave up its deathly hold on the jig, Rob considered retying the Fireline Crystal line just in case it had become weakend. But he decided that was taking a pretty big chance and since the knot had held tight despite several nasty snags, he decided to trust it. Good choice to because it never did fail all day long!

Mean while, Dick and I were busy trying to find the hot bait. Plastics of all sorts were dropped over board to no avail. Blades of many colors were jerked up and down repeatedly! That wasn't working either. Back to the jig and minnow we went. Only thing was, that didn't work nearly as well for us as it did for Rob. Oddly enough, Rob was sitting in the back of the boat. Now I've seen one guy get hot before and catch most of the fish, but it seems like nine times out of ten, the guy who's hot is sitting in the front of the boat where he can get first crack at em.

We didn't find our fish on any one spot today either. Instead, we used the run and gun technique. Almost every spot we went to would give up one fish, then nothing more. So, on to the next spot we went.

It took a lot of moving around but by the end of the day, we ended up with a total of 15 walleyes and saugers. Nine of them were in the legal slot range and one more was over 20" long. Guess who caught that one?

Nice job today Rob! Very impressive indeed. I'll see the two of you again this Friday and we'll see if your hot streak is still alive.

Saturday, November 10th

Today was a lot like yesterday. Not a lot of fish but some real quality saugers.

Ed and Joe Orlowski were my guest for the day and the morning started out on a really bad note.

Heavy fog and cold weather were contributing factors but a bigger factor was my inability to back up a boat straight. Somehow, I managed to smack the fender on my boat trailer into a solid steel post which was erected in front of the pier to keep knuckle heads like me from backing one wheel of their trailer into the water and the other one on top of the pier. I guess that doesn't work to well either but we will probably never know. I do know that you can quickly reduce one solid, plastic wheel well fender into several smaller pieces in a hurry if your not careful enough to avoid hitting that big, yellow post! We finally did get my big, white lund floating next to the pier without further damage to the vehicles, pier or post.

We then slowly headed out for some fishing. And I do mean slowly! The fog was very heavy and it took us around a half hour to go from Sunset Bay down to the south point of Weigands Bay. Once there, we were not going anywhere else until the fog lifted either. The fog actually got worse and it didn't lift until around 10:00am or so. That wasn't good either because we were not exactly lighting the world on fire. Joe did managed to put one 20" plus sauger in the boat but I also heard later from several other people that they were doing pretty good up by the bridge. Arrgh!

After the fog lifted we hit a couple of the humps but they didn't produce anything for us so we headed up to the bridge next. We spent most of the afternoon working that area over pretty hard and it kind of paid off for us. Ed and I each caught fat saugers that went over 20" long.

By the end of the day, we came in with a total of 5 walleyes and 7 saugers. Three in the keeper range and three more over 20" long.

Not bad but like I said, I did hear from several people who did quite a bit better. I'm pretty sure they were just trying to make me feel better though.

Thanks Guys!

Friday, November 9th

Roger Howard is a very lucky guy! Not so much because he got to go fishing with me today but more because he has every single Friday off for the rest of the year. I don't know how he managed to do that, but I'm pretty envious to say the least.

Roger and his wife, Marcia are the other half of our couple's league bowling team. Last November I got Roger out in the boat for some walleye and sauger fishing on Lake Wisconsin. Mostly, all he did was net my fish for me. This year, I returned the favor by netting all of his big saugers for him.

We didn't put that many fish in the boat today, but the ones we did were quality fish.

To be fair, I was working over some new water just to see what I could find. We didn't find many walleyes or saugers but I did run into the biggest dang channel cat I've ever caught. Unfortunately, I forgot to measure it before throwing it back. We did get some photo's though so no one can accuse me of making up fish stories. The big cat hit a jig/minnow combo in about 21' of water. It was pretty obvious right away that this was not walleye. But it wasn't a long, dragged out fight either. For some reason, this fish swam off to the back side of the boat and then came straight up. After a failed attempt or two to net it, Roger did finally get the whole fish into the net. I couldn't really blame him for missing it the first time since it barely fit into the net to begin with.

We spent the rest of the day switching back and forth from blades to jigs. I think at one point, I probably had about a dozen or so different colored blades and another half dozen different colored jigs laying around the front end of the boat. And none of them were working very well at all. Unless you call catching white bass working well!

Roger on the other hand kept slugging in out with about three different colors of blades and jigs. About every hour or so, he would pull in another fish including two nice saugers that went over 20 inches long. For a guy who only fishes a couple of times each year, Roger sure did give me a lesson today.

Thanks a lot buddy! Maybe next year I'll have to take somebody else along on your fall fishing trip.

Just kidding Roger. I had a great time and it doesn't bother me one bit if you out fished me.

Just as long as it never happens again!

Thursday, November 8th

With things slowing down a bit at my regular job, I managed to sneak in an extra day or two of fishing this weekend. I went out by myself on Thursday due to the fact that none of the people I called could go along on such a short notice. No problem, I'm okay with fishing alone.

I did run into Jim Blaser and his buddy Tom at Sauk Prairie Bait & Tackle in Prairie du Sac on the way to the lake though and we agreed to meet by the rail road bridge around noon and then grab some lunch over at Fitz's restaurant in Okee Bay.

As it turned out, Thursday was probably the best day overall as far as numbers go.

The best bite for me was definitely at the rail road bridge. I spent some time running around the lower end of the lake in the early morning hours but made it to the bridge right around 11:30am and almost immediately put a 21" sauger in the boat using a blade bait. Shortly after, Jim and Tom showed up. Since the fish appeared to be biting, we quickly agreed to hold off on lunch and keep fishing instead. Over the next 2-1/2 hours, I put another dozen walleyes and saugers in the boat, including one more sauger over 20" long.

Both blades and jig & minnow combos were working for me and since the bite was so steady, I didn't end up using any plastics or hair jigs. We also ended up skipping lunch but I don't think anyone really would have noticed if they were hungry or not anyway.

For the day, I caught 15 saugers, 2 walleyes, 1 channel cat and numerous white bass. Twelve of those fish were between 15 and 20" long and two more were over 20" long.

Sure wish fishing was that good every time I skipped work for a day!

It was fun fishing next to you two guys today Jim and Tom. And thanks much for helping out with the picture taking. It was very much appreciated!

Sunday, November 4th

The early morning hours were a little warmer than the last two days. No frost on the wind shield at all this morning. And the fishing was much better in the early morning hours today also.

Greg Schmitz, his son Ryan and father-in-law Ralph were all anxious to catch some Lake Wisconsin walleyes and saugers.

Ralph had a serious heart attack this past summer and only wanted to spend a few hours in the boat. Ryan is in seventh grade at Lodi Middle school and he had some serious home work to get done before Monday, so the plan was to fish for a couple of hours with Ryan and Ralph, then head back to the pier, drop those two off and pick up a couple of Greg's buddies

I really wanterd to see Ryan and Ralph catch a couple of walleyes or saugers but Greg had the hot hand early on using a 1/4oz B3 blade bait. He probably put 5 fish in the boat before either of the other two caught any. Ryan finally did connect on a nice keeper sauger and shortly after, Ralph pulled in a keeper sauger as well.

Unfortunately, we had to head back to the pier all to soon. With the fish still biting, we had a hard time tearing ourselves away from fishing, but Greg's phone kept ringing and we knew we had to go back.

Of course by the time we got back to the hotspot with Greg's buddies, Rich Appenzeller and John O'Brien, the bite had pretty much quit. For the most part, the rest of the day was slow.

I caught and released an 18-1/2" sauger and Greg caught and released a real nice sauger that measured up at 21 inches late in the afternoon.

You really have to take advantage of those feeding windows this time of the year. Do your best to be on the right spot when they do bite because thats the time to make hay!

For the day, we caught 13 saugers and 3 walleyes. Nine of those were between 15-20" long but the guys only kept four.

Jim Saunders Huge Pike

Late in the morning, Jim Saunders flagged me down as we were about to move up the lake to try another spot. He wanted to know if I had my camera along. I always carry my camera which proved to be a really good thing today.

Jim claimed he had a really, really big one and he wanted a picture before he let it go. When he first pulled this fish out of the live well, we all thought it was a muskie. But once we got the sun out of our eyes, we were even more impressed to see that it was a northern pike.

Wow, what a fish! It measured 44 inches long and was caught on a custom painted blade bait. I wanted to put a tape around it and get a girth measurement but Jim thought we should get her back in the water. He very much wanted this fish to swim away unharmed.

Jim did me a huge favor by allowing me to perform the release. I can't even put into words how good it felt to hold a fish like this in my hands while reviving it by the side of Jim's boat.

Thanks much Jim for letting me document your fantastic catch and for releasing her back in to the waters of Lake Wisconsin where she came from.

Hopefully, this won't be the last time we hear or see from her!

Saturday, November 3rd

Jim Linder and Scott Wright limited out on walleyes & saugers while fishing with me back on June 2nd this past summer. Scott let it be known early on that he was expecting nothing less on this trip than what they experienced this past summer. Just for the heck of it, I went back and looked at what they caught back in June. Only a whopping 47 walleyes and saugers! Well that sure didn't happen. Sorry Guys!

Actually, I don't think anyone really went home disappointed today. The fishing was better than yesterday and both Scott and Jim each caught a bigger fish than any of the 47 fish they caught back in June. Scott caught a really nice 20-1/2" sauger early in the morning and Jim pulled in a real pretty 22" walleye in the early afternoon hours. Aside from that, the three of us caught 8 walleyes and 4 saugers on a variety of different baits. Of those 12 fish, 4 were between 15 - 20" long and two others were over 20" long. Most fish came on either a B3 blade bait from B-Fish-N Tackle company or a jig/minnow combo.

Scott also caught a bonus fish today. Actually, the sheephead Scott caught is probably the biggest one that ever came into my boat. We do see a lot of sheepies here on Lake Wisconsin, but not many that are this big. Nice fish Scott!

These two guys have a great sense of humor and just like the last time, it was a real pleasure spending a day in the boat fishing with the two of them. Take care guys. Sure hope to see you back again next year!

Friday, November 2nd

Fishing for walleyes and saugers started out slow on Friday but it did pick up a bit by Sunday.

Friday I had repeat customers Kevin Reynolds & Frank Gavin in the boat. Last fall these two guys had a really good day using blade baits and they were definitely hoping for a repeat performance. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

A look back at the fishing reports from last year revealed water temperatures of 42 degrees compared to current surface water temperature of 50 degrees. Just the same, fishing was a little bit better than last weekend and it should continue to get better each week. Colder weather will continue to bring water temperatures down and that, along with a decreasing number of day light hours, will give the walleyes and saugers a greater sense of urgency when it comes to feeding.

Kevin, Frank and I only managed to put 7 walleyes and saugers in the boat on Friday using mostly blades or jigs tipped with minnows. One fish did come on a jig/paddletail combo. Fortunately, four of those fish were of legal size.