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  1. #1
    Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2018
    Location
    Lake County, Indiana
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    106

    Winchester/Manitowish Waters report out from last week. Not great.

    Whats up gents?

    Spent all last week in Winchester (North/South Turtle Lake) targeting smallmouth with my Dad and brother. Lows in the 20's Sun/Mon made the fish lazy but we managed to get on about half a dozen 4 to 5 pound smallies and also managed to (unintentionally) find 3 muskie with the biggest being a 36". A cold front came through Wednesday, if I recall correctly, and all but shut down everything the rest of the week. No bites Wednesday, 2 walleye Thursday and 2 sub 3# smallmouth Friday. Been going up there since I was a little one, 27th year, and it was by far the hardest week of fishing I've ever recalled. A local guide also told us that it was the slowest spring week he has had in 30 years but take that for what it's worth.

    Spent a lot more time than usual on the side scan and sonar chasing bait fish to find the smallies. Bait fish seemed to be suspended in 12-14' of water, with no real pattern, when we could find them. Most of the big smallies were caught on drop-offs of rocky points that merged with sandy bottom in about 7-10' of water. I can only assume things are popping off this week and next with the dramatic increase in temps, so it looks like we were a week early. Will be heading back up at the end of next month for another week to see what we can do.

    Anyone else up north have any luck last week?

  2. Member
    Join Date
    Jun 2013
    Location
    WI
    Posts
    1,638
    #2
    Went for panfish with a buddy on a small lake in Washburn County on Saturday. Caught 60-70 bluegill & crappie, but only 15 keepers. Accidentally landed half a dozen largemouth as well, but they were all small. MAYBE 14" was the biggest. Water was 57-58.

  3. Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2018
    Location
    Germantown Wisconsin
    Posts
    1,290
    #3
    Quote Originally Posted by served_usmc View Post
    Whats up gents?
    Anyone else up north have any luck last week?
    I spent a week up in Vilas County from the 11th to the 18th. Lakes were locked down at 49-52ish degrees and refused to warm up at all. Not a numbers trip but definitely boated some big ladies. Tubes and X-Raps. Fish were very inactive, and while we got some out sunning themselves on shallow reefs mostly it was meeting up with cruisers. Not many small males were caught or sighted so I just don't think we were even close to pre-spawn. The muskies were very active and one day we boated more of them than we did smallies!

  4. Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2018
    Location
    Lake County, Indiana
    Posts
    106
    #4
    Quote Originally Posted by WisconsinF View Post
    I spent a week up in Vilas County from the 11th to the 18th. Lakes were locked down at 49-52ish degrees and refused to warm up at all. Not a numbers trip but definitely boated some big ladies. Tubes and X-Raps. Fish were very inactive, and while we got some out sunning themselves on shallow reefs mostly it was meeting up with cruisers. Not many small males were caught or sighted so I just don't think we were even close to pre-spawn. The muskies were very active and one day we boated more of them than we did smallies!
    About the same. Never saw a water temp above 48 until Friday and even then the warmest we found was 51