October is Surf & Turf Time
10-11-2012
It doesn’t matter if fishing or hunting gets your blood going, October and November is the time. Jerry Kiesow www.jerrykiesowoc.com, On Wisconsin Outdoors’ flyfishing expert wandered out to the Sheboygan this week to check on the fall salmon run. With the exception of the photo below to trip your interest, we’re posting Jerry’s entire “album” under “Great Lakes Fishing”.
Jerry Kiesow found great king salmon spawning activity on the Sheboygan River.
“They say a photo is worth a 1000 words,” Kiesow writes. “Here are a few thousand. Details: Sheboygan. Mostly fresh Kings. Could pick and choose fish. If I wanted to take them I could have had my limit of legally caught, in the mouth, Kings, all fresh, in two hours.”
“Of course I have no idea how I would have carried them to the truck a quarter mile away. Let’s see. Five fish at about 12-14 pounds each. Yea, I’d have had to make more than one trip. Not worth it to me. Plus many other ‘released’ from foul hookups. Very surprised considering there is no water. These fish literally do travel on their bellies on wet sand. Keep a good thought.”
Our man John Luthens, one of On Wisconsin Outdoors’ traveling columnist, heads out to the Port Washington harbor to chase the same Great Lakes fish. Johnny sees more stringers of fish than he’s ever seen as anglers take advantage of that fall spawning drive that brings the salmon and trout close. Read it under “Inland Fishing”.
Also under “Inland Fishing”, connect with all of our great guides and see what’s snapping and where. I like to look at the photos personally. So far this week we’ve posted reports from Ashland, Hayward, the Turtle Flambeau, Rice Lake, Delavan Lake and Lake Geneva, the Wisconsin River at Wausau with more coming in. If you missed it last week, a 40 mile stretch of Wolf River from New London to Lake Poygan is offering up the best fall crappie fishing anyone has seen in a lifetime. Cast to any log, because the minnows are in so thick with the predator fish of all kinds chasing.
I called Johnny Little Shop of Bait in New London on October 11 to make sure the bite was still on. Ann Faucher told me that anglers are reporting super fishing and only a short time on brush piles to score a quick 25 crappies. And what are you doing this weekend. Start with Johnny’s: 920-982-4802. Under “Outdoor News” we post DNR newsletter and reports, Warden Wire and Warden Blotter, and more.
On to more normal sports…like hunting. Mike Foss closes down the bear season with another “Diary of a Wisconsin Bear Guide” and includes more photos of successful clients. I guess a photo of an unsuccessful client would be pretty boring. Connect with “Bear Hunting”. Almost all of Foss’s 25 clients (I believe as of two weeks ago 2 had not) had shot opportunity. The camp’s big bear weighed in at 528 pounds.
To date, I still did not go wood duck hunting in the Kettle Moraine creeks winding through the oak ridges of the northern unit after having great hunting in the northern zone opening weekend. I’m going with hunting buddy Scott Heitman tonight (Thursday). Right now temperatures are in the sixties in southern Wisconsin and I’m hopeful that the cold snap we did have did not push the early birds south of us. The skinny is that there are so many acorns that it’s Old Man winter, not a lack of food that will send them on their way to warmer wintering homes. Hopefully we’ll catch them tonight. Heitman hasn’t done this yet so like anyone, he’s in for a pleasant surprise if the birds are here. We’ll be sitting on a 10-foot wide, one-foot deep creek and the woodies love it. Tough shooting too (that’s in case I have to have an excuse for my misses).
Sunday and Monday I found myself in northwest Wisconsin interviewing DNR upland game experts and tramping around public land with Golden Retriever Micah trying to flush wild pheasants. Call it a pre-season scouting trip because I will be hunting Wisconsin wild birds somewhere. I carried a camera and watched as Micah put two cackling roosters to flight and a lone hen in about 90 minutes on two properties.
Now, this is important because I am a pheasant hunter but not a pheasant hunter who needs the sky black with the birds of South Dakota. I might go west this year for the first time in a decade, but my roots are here. When the cackling roosters of spring when hunting turkeys told me years ago that pheasants were in southwest Wisconsin, we went and hunted them in fall. Sometimes we brought home one bird and sometimes two, but the hunts were real and the potential for scoring better than coming home empty handed if we spent the day in the field. Now, due to wet springs and hard winters, the good Wisconsin wild hunting in part has shifted to the northwest. I’ll be going.
I’ll be writing a wild pheasant piece based on my interviews for publication in the November-December On Wisconsin Outdoors out in two weeks. But for now, we’re posting a “Dick’s Trip” story from Green County near Monroe spotlighting a wild bird hunt taken 10 years ago. Some things never change. The emphasis on habitat as the most important thing to the success of wild pheasants was the same then as it was when I interviewed DNR Wildlife Expert Mike Soergel this week.
Habitat is the key ingredient to the establishment of wild pheasants in Wisconsin.
Like many regions in Wisconsin, wild pheasants were released in northwest Wisconsin almost 18 years ago. Since then it’s been all about habitat supplemented by annual food plots, Soergel said, which typically is two acres placed in easy access to the cover. The problem is establishing high quality food close to cover providing protection from predators. Most pheasants die of exposure or predation. They succumb to winter or, if they have to travel a distance to eat, they get caught by predators.
“I don’t think they ever needed the releases,” Mike Soergel said. “Stocking is a waste of time. I’m proud that we don’t stock birds. These are naturally produced wild pheasants. If everyone who paid for pheasants put their money into habitat and acreage, we would have so many more birds. 60 percent of our pheasant stamp every year goes to raise birds at the state game farm.”
“What do they call it? Instant gratification. Stocking pheasants is an example of instant gratification. Nobody stocks grouse. But people don’t complain about low numbers of grouse.”
Back to the southwest for a second. On Thursday, October 11 I contacted my host from 10 years ago near Monroe in Green County. The County was on the forefront of wild pheasant restoration in Wisconsin, and oh, what a thrill for a hunter and dog to walk those fields. Habitat remains the key, Dave Wisnefske said, but old man winter still takes his toll.
“Three bad winters in a row down here have left very few quail and knocked the pheasants down significantly,” he said. “Last winter was mild and that helped but the summer was really hot and dry. Bird numbers are really down. I hadn’t seen one covey and that’s the impression I’m getting from the DNR too. Just recently though, it seems like some of the bird numbers are coming back.”
Thanks for connecting with On Wisconsin Outdoors. Our November-December issue is in production and will be on stands at 700 businesses the last week in October. Contact us at ellis@onwisconsinoutdoors.com for a drop point near you, or call 262-549-5550. Send your photos and outdoor adventures too. We will post.
Shoot straight.
Dick Ellis