Opener

[beelzebob]

Fished the wknd with a few buds. Initial plan was to hit the river..... nothing, water very low. Hit the flowage and managed to get 11 eyes, 2 perch, and several snakey northerns. I just could not get on the panfish - hit the wood hard and nothing. Got the eyes in 16-20', tiny jigs with a fathead. I didn't know there was a Tommy Bartlett show on the flowage but it sure looked like it by the dam. Thanks to the helpful folks at Donner's, vs. the decidedly unfriendly Camp 1.

[BlueRanger]

We also had a nonstop parade of boats going past the dock, headed to and from Horseshoe. Most were courteous, but I'd like to shoot the ones who drove through at barely planing speed, jostling all the boats at the docks with 3' wakes. When the water gets lower, a lot of boats tied at docks are barely floating, and a big enough wake will bounce people's motors into the bottom. People seem to forget that Wisconsin law holds boaters liable for any damage caused by their wakes.

As for fishing, I wiped the frost off the boat and headed out at 5:00 Saturday morning, and by 6:45 I was in the kitchen with a limit of 16" walleyes in the frying pan. I caught them all within 200 yards of my dock, working a perch X-rap very slowly along rocky shorelines near the channel in about 10' of water. Later in the day I worked about half the shoreline in Blair with a 1/16 oz. jig and 1" Power Grub, looking for crappies. I only managed a few perch and one very sluggish little northern. In the evening, I drove over to Patterson and in about an hour and a half I had a limit of 5 tasty little hatchery trout, casting from shore with a tiny firetiger Daredevle. There was quite a crowd over there, and just about everybody left with a limit.

Sunday I fished smallies all afternoon with limited success, then at around 7:00 I went back to the X-rap and had another limit of 16" walleyes in about 20 minutes, less than 100 yards from my dock. Again, they were in about 10' along a rocky shoreline dropoff near the channel. I released a few more and a chunky 24" northern, and called it a weekend. Surface temperature was at 49-50 degrees when I took out this morning, up about 6 degrees from Friday. Several of the walleyes I caught were males that had not spawned yet, and the perch in Blair hadn't spawned either.

Friday, Dennis was introducing everybody at Springstead Landing to our new TFF Ranger, Josh, who seems like a nice young guy. In case anybody missed the news, Dennis is retiring this year. I think he said Josh takes over on July 1. Here's a DNR article about Josh:

http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/facilities/turtleflambeau/ranger.html

Word is that Jeff Roth was very pleased with the size structure of the muskies captured in the survey - apparently a number of 50"+ fish were sampled. I sent him an email today to see if he would share some early impressions and perhaps some trivia, like the biggest fish of each species that they sampled. I'll be sure to pass along whatever he has to say.

[MuskieRandy]

Yeah, I saw the flotilla down at the dam too; you could hardly get through there! I fished outside of the pack, and had one hit, so I left. I fished for i's in the wood flats, but I had trouble with size, the biggest were 14.5".

The water level is 1.5 feet low, but it is coming up still. I think maybe it will reach full pool, but it might take a couple weeks.

BlueRanger, I had trouble with that link for the new ranger, try this one:

http://dnr.wi.gov/org/land/facilities/turtleflambeau/ranger.html