AN UNPRECEDENTED OPENING DAY
By Mike Yurk
In the twenty years I have lived in northwestern Wisconsin I thought I had seen it all on the opening day of Wisconsin’s fishing season. The fishing season began last Saturday.
Over the years I have seen sleet storms and rain on opening day. I remember one year the ice came off the lake, I was going to fish, only three days before the season began. Another time I recall driving home from fishing on the Mississippi River only three days before the opener in a blizzard and on opening day itself there was still two inches of snow on the first dock I fished.
Of course there were some opening days when the weather was better. Occasionally we got down to a long sleeve shirt or a sweat shirt and thought that was great. But that was nothing compared to this year.
Within an hour of being on the lake this year my wife Becky and I were fishing in t-shirts and shorts. Never had we seen this before in the last two decades we fished on opening day near our home in northwestern Wisconsin. It seemed even more unusual in light of the fact this year’s opening day was on the second day of the month; even a bit earlier then normal. It was unprecedented.
All of Wisconsin’s game fish, with the exception of muskies, are legal to fish for on the first Saturday in May. Trout, walleyes, northern pike and both smallmouth and largemouth bass are now fair game.
In the days of my youth, opening day normally meant trout fishing. For many Wisconsin fishermen, especially in the far northern counties of Wisconsin, opening day means walleyes. For me, opening day now means bass fishing. Although I fish for a little bit of everything, from muskies to trout, I am an unapologetic bass nut. I spend all winter, even though I do a bit of ice fishing for walleyes and fish the Mississippi River in early spring for walleyes and sauger, waiting for the bass season to start.
OPENING DAY BEGINS
By mid morning on Saturday, my wife Becky and I were motoring across Deer Lake in Polk County. We started on a rocky point with wacky worms. We fished for about twenty minutes without a strike when I switched to a shallow running crankbait. Half a dozen casts later I felt weight on my bait and pulled back, setting the hook to feel a fish racing off. The first fish in a new season is always a good feeling. The fish put up a short fight by the time I pulled it in the boat. It was an eleven inch bass. It wasn’t big but it was the first bass of the season and that made it good.
Twenty minutes later I caught a second bass. Becky, seeing the pattern, quickly switched to a shallow running crankbait as well. But for another twenty minutes neither of us had a strike. By this time we both in shorts and t-shirts. We couldn’t believe it. Even if we didn’t catch another fish, the day was going to be memorable. We had never seen it this warm on opening day before.
The sky was light blue with a few thin white clouds on the horizon. There was little wind and the weather people on television were predicting temperatures could make it into the low eighties. The water was clear as you would expect in early spring before the early summer weed growth. The temperature gauge on my depth finder fluctuated around the mid fifties.
We did not find any more fish in the shallow water and finally Becky wondered if perhaps the fish were in deeper water. I told her I was thinking the same thing so I switched our crankbaits from shallow running to deep running crankbaits. We both were using one of our favorite baits, a blue and silver number five jointed Shad Rap.
MOVING TO DEEPER WATER
I moved the boat into deeper water and twenty minutes later we still did not have a strike. Deer Lake is an eight hundred acre lake with lots of water to fish so we moved to the far east shore of the lake with the intent of fishing along the southern bank. Within a few minutes of moving both Becky and I caught a bass. Both of our fish were about eleven inches. For Becky, it was her first fish of the new season.
We continued to work the deeper water when I heard her yell she had a fish and then added “I think it is a big fish.” Her spinning rod was doubled over and I could hear the drag on her reel giving out line. I quickly brought my bait in, dropped my spinning rod and grabbed the net.
As I was standing next to her, I could see her line slicing through the water and the reel was still giving out line. “I think you need to tighten my drag,” she said and I reached in front of her, tightening the drag. Now she started to get back line and within a few moments I saw a long thin shadow in the water below. It was a big fish.
Finally she got it close enough for me to get the net under it and pulled it in. The fish was a fat, muscular northern pike. It was about thirty inches long and I guessed it weighed about ten pounds. It would be our biggest fish of the day. Becky was now a very happy fisher person.
From there we continued along the southern shore and steadily got strikes. By late afternoon, when we decided to head back to the boat landing, we caught two dozen bass. None of them were big but they put up a good fight and it was as good a fishing as we ever remembered in the twenty previous opening days.
Plus it had been a great day to sit in a boat. It was without a doubt the best weather we ever had for the beginning of a new fishing season. Despite several applications of sunscreen I had a bit of a sun burn.
The key to our success was fishing deep running crankbaits in deeper water. It looked like most of the bass were waiting in deeper water on the edges of their normal summer spots. We did not see any signs of the fish getting ready to spawn. In the clear water we could see sandy areas where they will be fanning out spawning beds. At this point we did not see that happening yet.
Moving about the lake in search of fish helped us to be successful, as well. We did not find a lot of fish in any one area but stuck with fishing deeper water and by the end of the day we caught a good number of fish.
With the exception of Becky’s northern we did not find any large fish yet although we had perhaps three or four fish just edging over the fourteen inch size limit. I suspect the bigger fish are holding in deeper water but eventually will emerge from there.
The first day of the 2015 fishing season in Wisconsin is now behind us. We have the whole season in front of us and we have glorious days to look forward to.
Editors Note: Mike Yurk’s column is sponsored by Warner’s Dock in New Richmond, Wisconsin. Warner’s Dock is the premier marine dealer in northwestern Wisconsin. They have a complete supply of new and used boats, motors, and trailers as well as other marine supplies plus a complete maintenance staff for all your boating needs. They can be contacted through their website at www.warnersdock.com or by telephone at 1-888-222-3625.