NORTHERN WISCONSIN BASS FISHING GUIDE - MINOCQUA, WI

FISHING TIPS

FISHING TIPS AND SHORT STORIES

THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE FISHING LIBRARY FOR WISCONSIN BASS FISHING

PRESENTED BY

Fishing tips and short stories by Andrew Ragas. In this open-access section, we share timely and useful information. The most comprehensive bass fishing library for Wisconsin bass fishing and across the Midwest.

Paddletails for Pre-Turnover Smallmouths

  Prior to turnover, paddletails and swimbaits dominate. When this bite peaks, the boat goes through 2 or more packages of tails per day.

Horizontally September

  As water temperatures gradually cool, the lakes eventually turn over, and smallmouths slide deeper to the point of wintering, the tackle box closes. As these events simultaneously occur, my boat’s tackle selection lessens each week – and the majority of gear and tackle I’ve carried up to this point will no longer be needed.

Searching for Slop

  Whether guiding or leisure fishing, we’re always looking for the best available and most unique weed habitat and shallow cover differing from the rest of the fishery. Across many Wisconsin lake systems, some of our best summer season fishing locations are around impenetrable, heavily vegetated areas.

Hunting Early Morning Giants

  It’s mid-July. The daytime surface temperatures typically reach 75 to 80 degrees, often exceeding that. Summer peak is on. Consequently, the daytime fishing efforts aren’t paying off, as the biggest largemouths congregate along the deepest edges, lay low, and are lounging around comfortably in the better oxygenated deeper waters.

Selecting for Specimens

  The first assignment for this challenge is identifying the true trophy bass lakes that have viable populations of smallmouths weighing 5 lbs. or more. Many inland northern waters throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan that are managed for trophy fisheries, and have special management regulations, qualify in this respect.

Smallmouth Fish Finders

  Nothing is simpler on the water than slinging a search lure and catching whatever bites. My fish-finding strategy is all about getting paddletails to wiggle, shimmy, and swim lively throughout the entire water column on a medium to steady retrieve.

Attacking Staging Sites

  At this time, smallmouths are schooling together and stacked; programmed to undertake structural migrations to where they will stage and set-up in preparation for their spawn which could be any day now.

Shallow Wood and Sand Patterns

  The most active smallmouths will attract to lake regions that are warming. The shallows with ideal bottom substrate and exposure to sun warm rapidly. They could be up to 10 degrees warmer than anywhere else on the lake. Smallmouths can gather and loiter around in depths as shallow as 1 foot to as deep

River Smallmouths Early and Late

  My region’s river systems provide some of the best and most exciting smallmouth fishing early and late in the year. This year (2024), will remain to be seen, as we are in a major drought right now.

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