Resort Report

Upper Chippewa Basin fisheries report (Price, Rusk, Sawyer Taylor and inland Ashland and Iron counties) - Despite several more inches of rain late last week and continued high water levels, fishing success was fair to good on most waters across the Northwoods. Almost constantly changing weather did keep anglers on the lookout for approaching storms, but anglers did find both musky and bass to be fairly active in the past week. Musky success showed a little surge and most anglers reported some good action from small and medium-size fish (28 to 40 inches) . Quite a few musky seemed to be active along the weed edges and in the shallower weed beds. Top-water baits, large plastics and slower moving stick baits were the most productive. Almost any time of day has produced action and was mostly dependent on local weather conditions. Action for both largemouth and smallmouth bass has been more consistent than any other time during the summer and some decent catches have been made in the last week. Largemouth seem to be finally settled into a more typical summer pattern and have been relating to the thick cover, especially woody structure and bog edges. Jig/craw combinations and Texas-rigged worms have been the most productive and have to be fished close to the wood, tight to the bog/marsh edges, or in open pockets in the weed beds. However, the top-water bite for largemouth continues to be very slow. Smallmouth bass have been a bit tough to find in the large, clear lakes, but action continued to be good on the flowages and larger rivers. Soft plastics and crayfish-colored crank baits (and large-sized as well) have been the favorite baits, and the smallmouth have been relating to wood near deeper water areas. Walleye action continued to be very erratic, and most anglers report the very tough bite has continued thru most of this summer. A few decent catches have been made and those have occurred in the river sections of the larger flowages. Leeches and crawlers fished along the deep edges, and in/along the weeds have produced most of the walleye that have been caught. Panfish action continues to be fair. Larger bluegill have still been a little tough to find but some decent catches of crappie, perch and rock bass continue to be reported.

Thanks to JRN for sending this.  I heard the story a couple years back, but this is the first I've seen the video....awesome!

"A couple of years ago during Lars walleye tournament, I was fishing with Derek and watched these Crappie anglers land a nice musky."

Lunar phases.  Do they matter or not?  Any first hand experiences with playin the patterns?

Hope everyone had a good weekend, and that many of you made it onto the water.  Lookin forward to any reports.

We've added the GeoSpots map now to the website, so in case you'd like to share any spots, it's now a lot easier than "you know, that shoreline just opposite of the island that The Landing is on."

Now, you can simply go to http://www.thelanding-lco.com/geoenter.php , follow the simple directions, and share the link...like so:

http://thelanding-lco.com/geospot.php?coords=45.93446%2C+-91.20092

We will have a permanent link installed to this feature by day's end.  In the meantime, hit this tiny weedbed bay, and 50 yards in either direction...staying in 8-10 FOW throwin cranks at lowlight.  There's a nice ledge outside of the weedbed and the old river bed is right behind you.  Plenty of action to be had there any nite.

Again, we all look forward to hearin how you're doin out there!

lar

Upper Chippewa Basin fisheries report (Price, Rusk, Sawyer Taylor and inland Ashland and Iron counties) - Area river and stream levels continue to be a little high, but most are still fully accessible for canoeists or bank anglers. Water temperatures also continue to be rather warm and have consistently been in the low 80-degree range (though they may start dropping with the recent cooler weather). The bug crop is also very high yet, with lots of mosquitoes, gnats and 'ankle biters' around to irritate outdoor enthusiasts. Despite the big change from hot and muggy weather to breezy and cool conditions this past week, fishing success has continued to be pretty good across most waters in the Northwoods. Smallmouth bass seemed to be the highlight of the past week with area rivers and flowages providing some very good action. Anglers have reported some real nice catches of 16 to 18 inch fish, with a couple of 4+ pound smallies caught and released in the past few days. Most of the fish were found near wood and structure along hard bottom areas that were also close to deeper water. Spinner baits, top-water baits, and larger finesse plastics were the most successful baits. Musky action also continued to be good. Fish have been getting increasingly active the last few weeks and most anglers report plenty of activity. Bucktails, bulldawgs and top-water baits continue to be the lures of choice and most of the fish have been found along the weed edges and in the less-dense weed beds. No lunkers have been reported, with most of the fish in the 32 to 38-inch size. Largemouth bass fishing has been erratic - some days produce some great action and other days yield very few bites. The largemouth do seem to be favoring the woody cover and the deeper weed and bog edges. Top-water action has been very slow, while soft plastics and jig/craw combinations have provided most of the success. Walleye fishing continues to be very slow with very few reports of any success. The few catches that have been reported have come from deep-water structure such as cribs and rock humps, with leaches and crawlers being the favored baits. Panfish action has been fair, some decent bluegill and crappie have been picked up suspended over mid-depth structure. Rock bass however, seem to be especially active and have provided many anglers with at least some sort of action!

After having lived on the Chip for five years, fishing it daily for walleyes, there is still no such thing as an uneventful trip.

This weekend, I returned for a weekend based out of Chief Lake. As my trips often end up, this one was less than smooth, but my fishing partner (DancesWithWalleyes) and I couldn't help but have a blast, just being on the water.

We left his place in southern Wisconsin on Friday evening, due to arrive on Chief Lake at about 2am.  The one problem with this time is the fog that seems to always envelope the northern part of highway 27...and obviously the deer. On this trip, these two factors "gently" collided. Even though I was driving only at about 35 miles an hour, it was hard not to overdrive the fogline 15 feet in front of the car. The truck, however, was fine, and as far as we know, the deer actually was as well.

After doing some grocery shopping and chores in Hayward, we were on the water for most of Saturday. Both DancesWithWalleyes and I both prefer to throw crankbaits in the lowlight hours for walleyes, so the daytime was spent scouting around the west side, visiting The Landing for some bait, and seeing what we could turn up while we waited for the sun to set.

We found a couple spots holding largemouth, northern and crappie. We hoped this boded well for evening walleyes since there was at least some activity during the daylight hours. Unfortunately not for us! It actually was kinda strange. All the other fish stopped biting at sunset, as if they were makin room for the weedbed walleye as they often do....but the walleye never showed up! haha

Unfortunately, we spent a bit too much time waiting...and hoping...and waiting. Oh, those flashes in the night sky? "That's just heat lightning. There is nothing forecasted for tonite." Wrong. We were in Rice Lake when we realized we were about to get wet, not only as a result of the rain, but also the 20 mile an hour winds.

We started the dark, moonless rush back to Chief Lake and had barely made it into Tyner when my GPS's map chip loosened out the clip and I was left driving with only partial instruments. haha. I can't remember the last time I was so happy to tie up at a pier, but we hit it RIGHT in time before the guts of the storm moved overhead.

Sunday, we spent more time on the East Side - DancesWithWalleye's specialty. He guided me to a nice spot over there (you'd have to ask him where) where I picked up the fat smallmouth in the photo album. By evening though, we had our minds on one spot back on the west side where we figured we just might be able to find some walleyes.

We pulled up to the weedy 6'/14' bar and I thought I'd explained where it was relative to the boat. Maybe not though, I wondered, as he began casting a shallow shad rap off the deep side of the boat. OR, maybe he's just experimenting...trying something new since what we'd been doing for walleyes hadn't been workin.

30 minutes later, just AFTER sunset, I have my back to him (ahem...casting in the RIGHT direction) and he starts yelling....then a splash. A 19" walleye had followed his rap back to the boat and attacked it just before he lifted it out of the water...right by the anchor rope. I don't think I've seen that green a fish in a net before! Happy to have finally broken the walleye skunk, DWW was still a bit confused about what had just happened. haha. Not often you have walleye smackin things that late in the retrieve.

Regardless, apparently there was something to his shallow diver over deep water. Five minutes later, he hit a 17"er. All the while I was skimmin the weeds of the hump with a deeper diving shad rap....with not even a bite at that spot.

Still somewhat intimidated by the previous night, I didn't want to stay out until complete darkness, however....so we headed in after givin it just a few more "lucky casts".

All in all, we caught walleyes, largemouth, smallmouth, northern and crappies this weekend - typical of even the slowest weekends on the Chip.

Can't wait to be back next month!

lar