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This spring I swear mother nature has turned bipolar. With temps up and down we never know what we're going to get. Last week we had unseasonably high temps, like record high temps. I believe last Wednesday was nearly 90* and all week the temps were in the 70's and higher. Ice on local lakes seemed to be melting so fast you could see it happen. Even though there are still a lot of little projects I wanted take care of on the boat before the season gets into full swing, this past Friday the urge was too great and instead of working on the boat I decided that even if there was ice left on the lake I was going to go fishing instead. I went to a local lake that normally opens up quicker than others in the area and luckily it was mostly ice free. There were still some floating icebergs, a few iced over bays, and some ice still stuck to the shoreline in places. Main lake water temps were running about 45-47 despite the ice cubes floating around. Day 1 I took some time running the boat around making sure everything still worked and was ready for action. It was fairly windy, but air temps were in the 80's so it felt pretty good. I started on a main lake point with a brush pile with no luck. Tried a little rip rap next to a bit of a drop, again nada. I then hit a few little pockets with the same result. Finally, I ran into one at the mouth of bay/creek on some timber and thought there might be a school there, but after working it over for a few minutes I was no longer convinced. I moved on and found some serious rust that needed to be shaken off. I was coming up to a blow down and pitched a jig at it, mind you this jig was still tied on since last fall...same knot, same trailer, same everything. I thought I saw my line moving, reeled down and set the hook only for my jig to come flying back at me. There was resistance for a second, but with the boat moving and with the wind, I chalked it up to the long winter removing some of my feel and thought I set the hook on a branch. Pitched back, thought I felt it get heavy, set the hook again and again my jig came back. On the same laydown this happened twice more and I started to think I was loosing my mind. Fished for about another 10 minutes and decided to change rods, so as I go to put my jig on the hook hanger...I realized I busted the hook clean off at the bend. The trailer was still perfectly in tack, jig looked great, minus the missing hook ?. As I moved back in this creek, the water temp is usually a few degrees warmer in the spring than the main lake, but the warm weather had me questioning if my graph was reading right. Water temps inside the bay/creek were anywhere from 58-60*!! When I ran into the warmer water I ran into the bass, ended up catching 9 bass, a crappie, lost a few, and had a handful of other bites. Most fish were caught on a Berkley Stunna, with the exception of one on a jig and the biggest one came on a lipless crankbait. Day 2 With rain possible in the forecast I waited until afternoon when it was supposed to have passed. I headed back to the same lake with my girlfriend and wouldn't you know it, a rain shower popped up right after we got on the water and the temp dropped about 15 degrees to the low upper 50's, the water temps were a few degrees cooler too. I thought with the passing front and the sudden wind direction change, it might turn them off a little, but was I ever wrong. Dialing it a little on what I did the day before, it took me about 5 minutes to catch the first one and started rolling from there. They were crushing a jerkbait and I feel like more fish came into the area as they weren't on every piece of cover, but the ones they were on, they were stacked up on. In 3.5 hours I ended up catching 20 bass, a bluegill and lost 2 bass not to mention another handful of bites. I wanted to try to expand on my pattern, but the temps and wind, mixed with being damp had my girlfriend sitting down huddled in every extra piece of gear I brought with kept us in the same area slightly protected from the wind. She did manage to catch one of the biggest of the day and only fished for about 15 minutes of the whole time we were out there. Overall, it felt great to be back out on the water again, and felt like a bit of redemption for how last year ended. Although I didn't catch anything massive, the vast majority of what I caught was above average and of the fish I caught only 2 would have been under the 14" size limit. Most productive tackle for the weekend was without a doubt the Berkley Stunna in Shad Fillet and a Spro McStick in Pro Blue I believe. All the baits pictured did produce though and put multiple fish in the boat. One of the smallest of the weekend, but it was the first bass of 2023 so there was no way I wasn't taking a picture of it along with some of the ice cubes! Below are some of the better ones of the weekend. P.S. Mother nature flipped her crap again, and we went from 70's and 80's last week to waking up to 17" of snow overnight with more coming down during the day. We ended up with about 20". ?‍♂️

What do y'all think the best bed fishing bait for smallmouth is. This is my first time bed fishing for smallies. I plan on using a 6'10" medium light spinning rod with a Daiwa BG 2500 spinning reel. ( I fish Northern Wisconsin).

On Tuesday (6/25/19), I was fishing out on Cornell Lake. It was a somewhat sunny day, but very windy. The wacky rig was the only thing that got the fish biting. I'm still learning how to work the rig, but it gave me great results. Altogether, I only caught three bass that day for three hours on the water. What's a good lure, rig, bait is best to throw on a windy day? The water at Cornell Lake is clear and full of vegetation.

What's up guys! I am planning a trip up north with 3 buddies to do some smallmouth and largemouth bass fishing. We wanted to rent a lake house and dock our boat on the lake so we can easily fish each day. We are not familiar with the area and was wondering if anyone knew of any great lakes to rent a house and fish on for bass in the spring? Any and all help is appreciated! There are so many d**n lakes to choose from! We currently have Big St. Germain lake booked but research suggests that it will be difficult to fish without a guide and its mostly a muskie and northern lake.

I was wondering if any one uses chatter baits. If you do what are some tips on fishing a chatter bait and what are some of the best trailers for chatter baits that you have use. What kind of weather or water conditions are best for using chatter baits? If you have caught fish on a chatter bait please post Thank You.

Usually I tend to stay off the water on the busy holidays, but fortunately for me, the weather was projected as iffy all weekend which kept a lot of crazy people away from the lake. Had a pretty decent weekend of fishing, the passing fronts had them tuned up a bit and had a blast with dad catching our share of northerns and bass, including a few nice ones. Given that the lake our cabin is on is still in rebound from a die off roughly 6 years ago it was good to see the numbers coming back along with some size as well. That was great, but Labor Day itself turned out to be one for my record books. The day also coincided with my aunt's birthday. She enjoys fishing, so I decided to take her out on a lake that's been on fire to have some fun hoping for her to hook into some good fish. She did get a few, but in the meantime, I managed to put together quite a bag of fish. I wasn't catching the numbers I'm normally used to there, but every other spot I'd pull up on, we'd work for a while and I'd smoke a good one cranking. It was later in the day after we had went up shallow in hopes of her getting a little more action, when I decided to hit a small hump not too far away. I caught my smallest keeper right away, and then had a giant engulfed my crankbait a few casts later. When I first hooked into her, I actually thought it was a little one. Not much of a pull, not much of a hit like the others I'd caught that day and just some small head shakes. However, about a quarter of the way back to the boat she decided to come up. Despite jamming my rod tip down into the water almost the whole body came out of the water and after that the fight was on. She started pulling like a freight train coming up and jumping at least one more time. My heart had just about stopped as bass very very rarely reach that size in northern Wisconsin. Between the battle and my aunt freaking out in the back of the boat I was beside myself at what was going on. I was just praying that she'd stay on. With my aunt having somewhat limited mobility, I was left to battle and land it myself. Luckily, I was able to get the net under her and get her up in the boat. Fighting this fish I knew it was big...but being up close with it, it started to set in just how big this bass was. I had the shakes pretty bad and my whole body just about felt like jello, but I had put keeper #5 in the boat...my kicker and it tipped the scales at 7.34 lbs bringing my days total to 21.73 lbs. I could have fished slightly longer, but we decided to head in a little early to get some good pictures not only of the fish, but my limit as well. I almost wish I would have stayed out a bit longer as I feel like I could have made another cull to put me into a minimum of the 22 lb range and the way the day was going...maybe even higher. Days don't get much better than that around here, but it was a blast and some great memories were made! Not a day I'll soon forget. All fish were released to be caught again another day, but I've got the measurements to eventually get a reproduction made. Link to the whole bag --> https://www.facebook.com/michael.mudgett.9/videos/10214557160715206/

I will be going up to lake noquebay in WI a very small lake and I can not find any updated fishing reports on the lake . has anyone been up that way to tell me what species is present?

Hi guys and gals if there are some here. Just figured I would put up this post to introduce myself. I have been lurking here in the shadows for some time but figured I would create an account. My name is Chris and I am in SE Wisconsin. I have been fishing my whole life but got more into bass fishing about 5 years ago. At that time I bought myself a boat just a Tracker pro team 175 txw but it gets the job done and well. For the last several years my boat has gone just about unused due to my job as a Firefighter/ Paramedic working tons of hours. Jump to now I have more time to fish when my body allows it. One thing I hate is I have no friends or family that are into fishing. My wife loves to go out with me but she would rather just enjoy being on the boat than fish which I have no problem with but sometimes it is nice to just have someone to fish with or against. Well I dont want to make this to long so I'll leave it at that and I am looking forward to interacting on here.

Yesterday I was a little annoyed, the weatherman was telling me it was supposed to be a beautiful day....until about the time I got off work and then there would be a pretty good chance of severe storms. Whatever, since when are they accurate anyway? I hooked up the boat and headed out, staying fairly close to home just in the off chance they were right. I went to a small lake known more for numbers than size and despite looking like rain on the way over, I was greeted by clear skies upon arriving at the lake. Being clear, sunny, and next to no wind, I started out fishing some docks but it didn't take me long to figure out they weren't holding on them. Next, I tried fishing some cribs out in 10-15' and again, nothing. I moved back in towards the bank and fished in the 4-6' range on the submerged grass flats and finally started running across a few that were willing to hit a lipless crankbait ripped through the grass. A shower did end up moving through a few miles away from the lake but I stayed dry. It ended up making for a beautiful evening with all sorts of crazy colors in the sky. Fishing picked up and I had pretty steady acting for the evening. A few highlights included a pair of nice walleyes. I had never caught one there before and didn't think they were present in the lake so that was a pleasant surprise! I also took my drone along and managed to catch my biggest bass of the night (just over 18") on my first cast after putting it up. I'll add the video here later since I didn't have time to edit/upload it when I got home.

Well, despite getting to fish later into 2016 than I ever have before, the winter seemed to drag on forever. However, the ice is all gone, I've had the boat out to make sure everything was working as it should, and I've got a tournament fast approaching. The fishing season is still closed on most inland waters in WI (I know, it's dumb), but the waters of the Mississippi River have an open season year round. Last Friday, my dad and I had a chance to head down to Fountain City and get out on a stretch of river that neither of us had fished before. We really lucked out weather wise as rain was in the forecast, but it was dying down just as we got there, and didn't come again until just before we were ready to leave. Water temps were between 49 (main river) and 53 (backwaters). Despite the warmer surface temps, the bass seemed sluggish and weren't willing to chase anything down, but were still willing to eat. Almost everything we caught was on either small craws light texas rigged, or on a jig. In the 6 hours we fished, we managed to land somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 bass. All but 3 were of legal size and very healthy for their size. We also caught 3 norhterns, 3 dogfish (bowfin), and lost at least 7 other fish. Fish were relating to shallow wood close to deeper water. A few such areas we caught multiple fish off a single piece of cover with our highest being 3 bass on 3 consecutive casts to one piece. Overall, it was a great way to start the year off, and it has me excited to get back! I'm currently working on trying to take tomorrow off work so I can get at least one more day of prefishing in before the tourney and seeing if I can locate some areas with a little bigger fish. **Warning** Pic heavy post as excitement of rippin' lips kept the camera flashing!

I am located in Northeast Wisconsin and am looking for any decent creeks with smallmouth. I would prefer to wade rather than fish from shore and it would need public access.

Hey guys. I have a couple questions about the BFL. I've been fishing as a co-angler in two different circuits in American Bass Anglers tournaments for the past two years and I want to try some different waters. So I was thinking about trying the BFL as a co-angler in 2017 (potentially the Great Lakes/Wisconsin division). As far as I know, the BFL has boaters fishing against boaters and co-anglers against only other co-anglers. Is this still true? It's been incredibly difficult getting decent points in the ABA as a co-angler trying to compete against experienced boaters. I guess the question is will it be significantly different from the ABA tournaments in any way? If so, is there anything different on the co-angler side that I should be aware of? I also saw that the BFL just opened their tournament registration a few days ago. So I'm wondering if there's a need for co-anglers to register as quickly as possible, or if those slots don't fill up nearly as quickly as spots for boaters? Besides those things, I'd like to hear if anyone has any insights with the BFL that might help someone thinking about making a move to that league after the long, cold winter.

Yesterday was a beautiful fall day here as the temp was in the 70's. With the days getting shorter there isn't as much time to fish after work anymore, so traveling half an hour or more to fish a different lake almost isn't worth while. The lake I live on has been on a downward spiral the last few years. The bass fishing there has never been all that great, but it used to be great for northerns and although they're rebounding, it's nowhere near where it was. I've hardly fished out there the past few years, but if you can time it right both in the spring and fall, you can get into a decent population of smallmouth that migrate into and out of the rivers that feed the flowage. Anyway, it was too nice of a day not to fish yesterday, so I headed out for about 2 1/2 hours. I managed to boat 7 smallies. They were stacked up on what wood is in the accessible part of the river. One small tree with hardly any branches on it had 4 fish on it and possibly a 5th as well. Everything I caught was one of two baits. One was a Bomber Long A model B14 and the other was a Rapala Shadow Rap Deep. I kept them moving pretty fast and every one just crushed it. It was a fun night to be on the water. ^ Just a little 15", but he looked so pretty in the sun I couldn't help but take a pic

I am going up to a cabin on Balsam lake in Wisconsin and I was wondering if anybody had any tips for fishing it. I was hoping to catch some walleye, bass and maybe a northern. Any help is appreciated, thanks.

Things have been slow at work recently and because of that, I managed to get half a day off on Tuesday. Heavy storms were predicted overnight, but it looked like they were going to move in a little early. Nevertheless, when I have an opportunity to fish, I'm going to take it haha. I headed out to hit up a lake I've got a tournament coming up on in a few weeks. When I got there it was mostly sunny and decided to start on some shallow isolated pad clumps. Things were slow at first. I couldn't get them to hit anything around some of the pads until i started in with ol' kermy. The slight breeze died out, and for whatever reason though, they didn't want to commit. They'd come up and attack it, take it down and you'd set the hook and there was no resistance. It was almost as if they were only grabbing it by the tail. After missing 7 that way I was frustrated so I went out and started fishing some deeper points and hooked into a decent fish. When I pulled up on a hump, I the weather changed again, the wind picked up a little and it had clouded over. You could see the storms building and could hear thunder rumbling in the background. I headed back closer to the ramp so I didn't get caught in anything sever, and started fishing in some heavy matted grass. I think I made a whole 3 casts before the first one blew up on it and I had it on for a bit before it pulled off. 0 for 8...yeesh that's a great way to start haha but I stuck with it and boy am I glad I did. In the next hour and a half I caught 18 fish on the frog and only lost 2. 2 of those 18 were almost an exact pair of twins both came in at 17". They both came off the same little spot, and I think they both went after my frog the first time I threw there because one came completely out of the water and jumped over it and there was the blowup on my frog at almost the exact same instant. Sometimes being persistent...cough cough stubborn, pays off and it was exactly one of those times. I had a blast before the storm rolled in and forced me to go home a happy man.

Last Friday, I had the whole day off work instead of the usual half day, so I headed out to do some prefishing for a tournament I've got coming up. My offshore game quite honestly a little weak, so I've been trying to work on that as well. I had a good opportunity to do both, so I took advantage. The weather was pretty much bipolar and couldn't decide what it wanted to do. One minute it was so hot I wanted to take my shirt off, 5 minutes later I was ready to dig for a sweatshirt, a few minutes later I was pulling out the rain gear. It kept cycling through that way for quite a while before it finally just got kind of chilly and windy. There was a decent square bill bite going on up by the bank but after catching a few, I would do my best to fight the urge to have a blast and move back out deeper. I'd puts for a while and then go back shallow and catch a few. I lost a few good fish out on some humps and was starting to get a little discouraged. My luck finally turned around a little when I was pulling a football head across a stump covered hump. There wasn't much as far as a hit, but it just felt different, so I let her have it and felt that amazing feeling as the rod loads up, but what your hooked into doesn't move much. You know you have a good one on and the anticipation builds while you battle and try to get a the first glimpse. It ended up being an 18 3/4" largemouth which looked like a straight up monster after doing a considerable amount of dink dropping! After being on that high, and riding it for a while, it took a little dip when I lost another solid fish boat-side that would have been close to 18". Unfortunately the down slide didn't stop there. About a half hour later, I found out I did some damage my squarebill rod earlier when it got caught under my tie down cleat. I though I got lucky because it kind of popped out, I didn't hear a crack, and it wasn't visibly damaged. Unfortunately the next hook set I had with it very neatly snapped in two between the first eye and the reel. The sad thing was it was on a little 12 incher, so I couldn't even have the story that I hooked into one so big it snapped my rod! By the end of the 6 1/2 hours of fishing, the total count was 18 largemouth and 2 walleyes. It was challenging to keep going on the off shore stuff despite knowing the quality of fish that live out there. Had I ground it out with the squarebill, there's no doubt I could have had anywhere between a 30-60 fish outing, but I wouldn't have been working to get better.It definitely was a roller coaster of an outing, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat...as long as I could go without breaking anything! Those are going to be the 4 most expensive walleye fillets I've ever eaten lol.

I see a lot of people on these forums from Florida,Texas,California, and many southern states. Unfortunately I see little talk of northern tactics and teqniques. Specifically for Minnesota lakes, lakes filled with pads and weeds. What sort of teqnioches do those of you who live in this frozen hell use? I plan on using mostly wacky worms, jigs, and spinnerbaits this year. Jerk baits early in the season. What else would you suggest? Thanks!

My family owns a cabin on Miller Dam, a once red hot bass fishery in north central WI. The lake itself is very shallow, with average depth in the 4' range and naturally grassy. Unfortunately over the past 10-15 years the lake has seen it's share of hardships. In roughly 2000, a bone headed game warden put wild rice in each of the feeder creeks for the lake. The result has been a takeover of the rice. By mid summer, large sections of the lake look more like a field than a lake. With the lake being so shallow it has spread like wildfire inhabiting much of the productive flooded timber the lake was once known for. There was also another invasive grass that made it's way into the lake that choked out much of the native species of grass. Once lush large grass beds with well defined edges have turned into small clumps of grass spread all over. Due to it's shallow nature and the harsh Wisconsin winters, there have been a few years there have been small winter kills. Thanks to the lake association installing aerators the kill had been kept to a minimum, and the bass population hadn't taken a substantial hit. That is until 2012-2013 winter when a very late spring managed to wipe out a majority of the bass population. The club I fish with had a tournament scheduled out there that summer, and there was also another local club that had a tournament out there that day. (typical despite the lake not being huge) Between the 30 some tournament boats out there that day there were less than 15 bass weighed in that day. On a normal year, the vast majority would have brought in limits. It's sad to see such a great fishery go downhill. My dad and I had fished it a few times each year since, but nowhere near as much like we used to. Even the northern population had seemed to have stumbled a bit, but at least there is still hope for this fishery. Each year our trips have yield a few bass, with the size slowly increasing as well as the number. Not tons, but enough to have hope it will continue to get better. Also the size of the northerns has gradually increased. Not so much in the average size, but you're starting to see some larger ones. In the short amount of time I've fished there this year, I've caught 2 in the 30" range and lost 2 that were in that same class. My dad and I also almost had a limit of largemouth this past Sunday, and also caught two decent ones on Saturday. As for the weekend counts, combined we caught over 40 northerns and 7 bass. Fingers crossed that this fishery will continue to improve, and one day return to it's prominence of one of northern Wisconsin's top bass fisheries. A few quick highlights from this weekend.

After it seemed like forever, fishing season finally opened up here in Wisconsin last weekend. Both my father and I went out to a local park to do some fishing on foot. We started out fishing near the d**n, which is usually where we do the best. The water was warmer and murkier than I had expected it to be. I had one gentle bump from a fish on a squarebill. I saw some fish breaking on top, and I tried a topwater, but that didn't pan out. The fishing season opener is like a national holiday in Wisconsin, and us fishing at a public park, it started to get crowded and we decided to abandon the usually good spot. Instead we went to the south end of the pond where the creek runs into it. This spot is also where we caught most of our bass during last year's opener, as well as this: This trout was caught during last year's opener, and I also caught some smaller brook trout in the process. So all this winter I have been thinking of what I should throw to the bass to imitate these trout. A few months ago, I went to an outdoor expo and purchased some awesome looking swimbaits made by a local guy in Wisconsin. I had decided I was going to use this opening day the day that I bought the swimbaits haha. Anyways, I rigged up the swimbait Line-through style ( because I have NO confidence in those weighted swimbait hooks). Me and my dad tried fishing this area, but again zeroed out, not even a bite. We felt a little discouraged, I thought we might get skunked! We had one last spot try on this body of water, which is a long, nearly featureless bank. (that I usually do pretty poorly on). Me and my dad decided to walk the length of the bank (maybe 3/4 of a mile), he had a T-rigged soft stickworm and I had my swimbait. After fishing a hundred yards or so, I got a tap on my swimbait, then my dad hooked up with a 2 pounder! Then his very next cast, he caught this pond behemoth. Weighed 3-15 on our Rapala Scale (which I think is off ) And is the biggest Largemouth he has ever caught! A short ways down the bank, I caught a 2-10, and the first fish I have caught on a "bigger" soft swimbait. A few minutes later, I hooked up with this big girl! This one went 3-7 and was 2 ounces less than my PB largemouth. Me and my dad were certainly happy we didn't give up earlier! I ended up catching 7 bass and my dad 5, all but two were 15 inch plus fish. We had a great day on the water, it was challenging at first, not having a meaningful bite for almost 2 hours, but we stuck to it and we figured them out. I don't know what else you could ask for in a day of fishing!

Hey everyone, i'm Jon. I started using bass resource about three months ago after seeing BassResource's YouTube videos, but decided to check this place out before joining . I decided to create an account a few weeks ago, and just now found the Introduction section. Just like the title says I live in southern Wisconsin about an hour south of Madison. Something you also might want to know is that I am/was a pretty big kayak fisherman. Since I can't drive I created a kayak trailer that I can pull behind my bike to get to the local lake, and that was pretty much the start of my kayak modifications. I have since then created a bow mount trolling motor for my kayak out of a stern mount trolling motor, a homemade kayak rudder system, and a few other small things here and there. The reason I say I 'was' a kayak fisherman, is because this fall I purchased a 1448mv jon boat, and I don't know how much I'm going to use my kayak now. That's pretty much it, can't wait to contribute!

Looking to expand the fishing territory and as a resident of a Chicago Suburb the southern part of Wisconsin seems to be a great place to start exploring. Have a kayak and am willing to put in day long trips to fish. Any suggestions for great lakes or rivers with access?

I live in Eau Claire, WI and im trying to find some fishing spots I don't have a boat or canoe. I have waders but I don't know any creeks or shallow bass spots to use them at. I use a lot of top water frogs so any place with lily pads or a lot of grass or weeds in the water. Im also looking for shallow fishing spot as to were I could walk in the water I would like it to be clear and rocky bottom or if anyone knows of good largemouth ponds near Eau Claire, WI. Please help me out I just want to get some bass fishing in before it gets to cold cause im not much of a ice fishing person. I have already tried half moon lake, elk creek lake, eau Claire dam, and Altoona dam. remember I don't have a boat or canoe but I don't mind walking threw the woods or in the water to get to a fishing spot I just don't noe to many spots around Eau Claire, WI if anyone could give me a lake, pond, river, or a creek with small or largemouth bass near Eau Claire, Wi I don't mind driving 30 to 40 mins to get to any fishing spot. Thank You

Hey guys, just made this post to let you know that the Chippewa Valley Bass Attack is looking for members. We have a team format, and generally fish lakes within an hour and a half of Eau Claire. As a team, we fish for a 5 fish limit so if you're a boater and want to fish alone, you can still compete. The Bass Attack is a B.A.S.S affiliated group that is part of the Federation Nation. For those of you unfamiliar with this, it means you are able to fish a series of tournaments (a kind of playoff format) that if you place high enough in, will earn you a trip to The Bassmasters Classic. This will be my 3rd year in the club and I've gotta say the members are all pretty stand up guys, not to mention they can fish! If you want to know more about us, check out our website at http://www.chippewavalleybassattack.com If you have any questions, you can always hit me up on here and I'll get you the info you need or put you in touch with someone who can.

This is for those in the illinois, wisconsin, and iowa area, I've had terrible luck lately. Where are you guys finding them. I don't want to know your favorite fishin hole, but are you catching them in the shallows yet or are they still in the depths near you. Are the near the rocks, muck, or last years weedbeds. This is a discussion about where you're finding them, what your catchin them on, and your first good fishing stories of the year.

Greetings: I am fairly new to bass fishing and was wondering if anyone was from central/northern Wisconsin and if there were any tournaments around the area. Thank you.