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!
Saturday, May 19thn 2007
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.
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!
