Central Wisconsin Outdoor Report 8-9-2012
Musky action has picked up this past week with a few nice fish being caught and one giant going a whopping 53 inches long. A lot of the muskies are coming during low light periods with the largest ones coming right at or after dark. The muskies have been biting on jerkbaits like Suicks, big bucktails like the cowgirl and topwater baits like the top Raider and Stomper.
Walleyes have been biting pretty regularly this past week with good action coming from 8 to 12 feet of water. Most of the action is coming on crawlers and leeches but with the lower water temperatures this past week we had some good action on minnows as well.
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| Ted with a very nice football of a smallmouth bass that actually struck a Suick while musky fishing! | Reese Geier with a walleye and a crappie that he caught while we were out fishing. | Jenny from Missouri with a nice walleye from the Wisconsin River |
Panfish action has been great with good catches of both crappies and gills. The crappies are suspended about 5 to 7 feet down over 14 to 18 feet of water and can be caught by drift fishing deeper areas with baits set at appropriate depths. The gills are holding in deep wood and weeds and can be caught on tiny 1/32 ounce jigs tipped with a piece of crawler or small plastic. For the best success work the set-up with and without a bobber to target different depths along the wood an weeds.
Bass are biting well with most of our fish coming from rocks and wood in 3 to 6 feet of water. We are catching our bass on plastics or jigs tipped with crawfish imitating plastics in brown or green worked very slowly across and through the structure.
Bear season is less than a month away and we are seeing a lot of nice bears at our baiting stations. Most of the activity has now shifted from night time to us having a lot of daytime activity. We are seeing bears in out stations as early as 1:00 in the afternoon. To keep the bears interested in our baits we have been changing up our baiting material each time we go out.
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| A nicely marked bear at one of my baiting stations. | A wolf that I caught on my trail camera in Marathon County south of Wausau Wisconsin. |
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| A bear at one of my stations. | A bear at one of my stations. |
On another note I got several good photos of a wolf on one of my trail cameras set up in Marathon County between Wausau and Mosinee. He was hanging out around one of my bear baiting stations for quite some time.
Phil Schweik
Licensed Wisconsin Hunting & Fishing Guide
Hooksetters Guide Service www.hooksetters.biz
Ruttnut Guide Service www.ruttnut.com
Reed & Hoppe Wildlife Food Plots www.foodplotting.com