The opener is behind us and the lakes are settling into their quiet rhythms. Traffic at the landings has eased and there’s plenty of room to breathe on the water. It’s a good week to get out, and hopefully the weather will begin to cooperate. We’ve got only a couple more weeks left until summer season gets serious!
Walleye are done with the spawn and are starting to move toward emerging weed edges to feed. Action for them has been decent, but not great. The shallows are still worth fishing, particularly rocky and gravelly structure in 4 to 10 feet, and the evening low-light bite remains reliable. Jigs with fatheads or Lindy rigs with crawlers, fished slow and near the bottom will do. …
What an opening weekend we had up here! The Chain was in good shape, the landings saw traffic at first light, and there were plenty of happy anglers moving around by mid-morning. With the cold start, we saw a lot of lake-hopping as the water temperatures varied from lake to lake so much this year. While the bigger, colder lakes to the north were seeing temperatures that still sat in the 40’s, places like the chain had water in the mid-50’s. Regardless, we had beautiful, sunny weather for the weekend.
The opener brought the typical excitement around walleye, and for the most part, they didn’t disappoint too much. Most of the action was in the shallows — 4 – 10’ — on rocky and gravelly shorelines where the fish had been staging. …
The countdown to the game fishing opener is finally upon us and we’re expecting a good one this year. The ice is gone and the water is waking up. The peepers are out in force, the tree frogs have made their presence known and the loons are back. There’s nothing like hearing their calls over the water for the first time in the Spring! This week’s weather is looking a bit unsettled and cool towards the end, but right now all signs point to a beautiful early May weekend in the Northwoods. The fish have been moving into nice, Spring patterns so regardless, it’s going to be a good weekend.
Water temperatures will depend a lot on the lake and the location. …
Well, we are right in the thick of it now. Ice-out is either here or close enough to taste on all of the lakes in the area. After a pretty nice week last week with warm temps and some rain – we dipped back into the 20’s and 30’s just in time for the weekend – and woke up to temps in the teens on Monday. That gave a few of the smaller, shallower lakes one last stubborn morning of ice along the shorelines – the forecast climbing into the mid-60s and even 70s by mid-week should put that to rest for good. That kind of warmth, a little wind (which there’s been no shortage of) and some of that spring sunshine in late April up here tends to do the job fast. …