“FLAG UP! Walleyes cooperate as season draws to close”
Dick Ellis
If a watched pot will never boil, these tip-up flags ready to trip on the Minocqua Chain in Oneida County didn’t stand a chance. Which led to a serious question Thursday as the curtain began to fall on the inland gamefish season. Who cares?
Forty-one degrees said the mercury. The sun was dropping in the southwest against brilliant blues. Turn toward it, with closed eyes, and feel the heat radiate off a pittance of late February snow. Listen closely over a gentle breeze and hear the Spring train chugging for Wisconsin somewhere in the distance, hauling its precious cargo of open water and ridge top gobbles. No walleyes, perhaps? Who cares?
Anyway, one should really place bait beneath the tip-up if he really wants the watched flag to spring. Rick Writz, Steve Henske and I were simply soaking away a bit of vintage Wisconsin, shooting any bull that cared to wander into the conversation. And, saving our shiners for the time being from the swarms of perch that would call the walleyes to the feedbag too as the sun slipped further toward the horizen.
“It’s always good to see perch,” Writz said. “That’s why the walleyes are here. There’s just tons of perch. Yesterday they were hitting the shiners. I caught some of those 12-inch perch on the tip-ups. Tonight, I wanted to be out here early. But we’ll only set the tip-ups for walleyes the last two hours of light and save the shiners.”
Writz is an open-water guide primarily focusing on lakes in Oneida and Vilas Counties; but willing to join a walleye hunt to close out the ice season solely upon request of a reporter. Despite the fact that he hadn’t been on the ice fishing in a month. Despite the fact that the always possible “skunk” might be an unfair testament of his knowledge. And despite the fact that I called Wednesday and said I’d be 300 miles north to fish in less than 24 hours.
In a guide’s mind, that meant one evening and one morning to find walleyes before game time. Despite my assurance that this column is not about guaranteed catches. Or bigger fish every time out. It is about the journey toward that success, and recording it. Writz would walk this week’s journey. I would work the camera, and scribble.
We met a cautiously optimistic Writz at Island Sports Shop in Minocqua where owner Kurt Justice loaded us with minnows. Writz had planned first to look for walleyes Wednesday night on a 15 to 20 foot mud flat near weeds and just off a shallow sandbar. If that failed, he would return Thursday morning to the deep water where he last had walleyes working a month before but prior to an extended cold snap. If that failed, we would rendezvous and together roll the dice on another shallow area.
“But that first spot had the walleyes,” he said. “I caught one legal walleye and lost two that really had weight to them. One broke my line. This isn’t like the open water season where I’m on these fish all the time. The walleyes were on a different pattern in mid-January, in deep water next to rock. They were gone after the long cold snap. Finding fish at early ice is simple. They’re shallow and they’ll bite. But through the course of a winter, it gets cold and the fish are moving. Weather changes and weather is everything. Fish have to adapt to find food so they move, mostly to different depths.”
We drilled holes on the mudflat on the Minocqua Chain by mid-afternoon, conducted an on-ice Writz interview, and watched our hanging time clock in the sky slip closer to clanging the walleye dinner bell. Just prior to that, Writz set tip-ups with medium golden shiners a foot off the floor. Dacron line filled the spools, with a four-foot leader of eight-pound monofilament. We waited. We talked. And we watched our flags.
A Writz favorite, the Minocqua Chain offers a variety of structure including an abundance of weed beds and mid-lake rock humps, deep water, and a Cisco forge base that has helped build the chain’s reputation for big walleyes. He targets it often during the open water for its quantity, quality, and variety. Writz caught fat bluegill, perch, crappie, northern and largemouth bass after looking for walleye Thursday morning.
“I caught my biggest walleye here in the middle of the summer on a bright, sunny Sunday afternoon,” he said. “Boat traffic was heavy, there were water skiers everywhere. That fish was nine-pounds, 14-ounces.”
Like most Wisconsin ice anglers saying good-bye to the inland walleye season, we were just hoping for action. Over two hours, when the window had dropped its black curtain completely over our tip-ups, two walleyes had been lost. One bite-off said a northern or musky had visited. Four walleyes between 16 and 19-inches lay iced.
When that first beautiful walleye had been tugged from its home, was that a wisp of breeze rising briefly? Or was that Rick Writz, breathing a sigh of relief that walleyes were where he said they’d be? You see, you’ll never really talk a guide out of his pride.
Even if he is an open-water specialist. Who hasn’t been on the ice in a month.
To contact Rick’s Guide Service call 1-715-277-4445, or rwritz@newnorth.net. Visit his website at www.fishingminocqua.com/rickwritz
FISHERMAN FOLLOWS CALLING, CATCHES FRIENDS
25 years ago, Rick Writz left his home in Athens, Wisconsin and answered his professional calling to fish for a living in Vilas and Oneida Counties. Targeting all species of gamefish but specializing on walleyes primarily on 20 area lakes, it’s a decision he hasn’t fished to regret.
“Fishing is all I ever had in my head,” Writz said. “I always loved it. If I haven’t burnt out on it by now, I’m not going to ever.”
Writz said that he is looking forward to the new season beginning the first Saturday in May, but wishes more people who elect to use a guide would consider the early days of that first month when scheduling walleye time. Historically, most clients request a date after Memorial Day.
“I would like to get more people up here earlier,” Writz said. “In May there can be weather. It can snow. But in early May they’re also missing some of the best fishing of the year.”
Although his clients include both the experienced and novice angler, he said his job is to pass along fishing techniques that persons in his boat can use “for the rest of their lives.” “Guides get a good buck for fishing,” he said. “But I’ve had people tell me it’s some of the best money they’ve spent on fishing because they can apply what they’ve learned anytime and anywhere else they fish.”
Writz was asked if fishing for a living is perhaps not as glamorous as many might think. Specifically, working daily with different personalities who are paying for a service and expecting results, in all types of weather.
“When I began guiding, I expected to be working doing something I loved,” he said. “That has happened. But I’ve made some really, really good friends who started as clients and who I’ve been fishing ever since. That’s a long time. That was a surprise.”