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Posts: 334
Location: Madison, WI | Ive been fishing for awhile, but until i started musky fishing i had never fished any madison lakes. Having them close to home is nice considering they hold muskies. But after talking to the guys at dorns and people at work im sort of confused. As i under stand it...
Mendota - holds muskies but not alot, mainly a pike lake
Monona - Best lake for big muskies and decent numbers
Wingra - Numbers lake with ok size
Waubesa - Numbers lake with better size
Kegonsa - About the same as mendota
Now i know when it comes to nature nothing is set in stone, but is there any truth in any of this?? Im not looking for honey holes, but id like to get some fish under my belt as far as learning the lures and what not. I just would like to have a solid idea of the body of water im fishing. Ive got to pay my dues but id like to narrow out the learnign curve alittle for the sake of my kids lol. I didnt grow up fishing muskies and only have 2 friends who do so i rely alot on this forum and another forum for info. Thanks in advance!! |
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| The lake assessments you got from the sport shop are pretty accurate.
Come to the Capital City Muskies Inc meeting this Monday, the speaker is talking about fishing the Madison Chain and you'll be surrounded by other local muskie fishermen who you could talk to about it.
http://capitalcitymuskiesinc.org/
The meeting is at the 5100 Bar & Grill in McFarland, at 5100 Erling Avenue. The meeting begins at 7pm, come by early as the restaurant has great food.
May 14 – General meeting @ The 5100 Bar and featured speaker is Madison Chain walleye and muskie guide, Mike Pecosky. He will talk about catching Madison muskie
under difficult fishing conditions.
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Location: The Yahara Chain | That is pretty close.
Wingra has by far the most numbers but catching a fish 45 or greater is rare.
Monona and Waubesa both have .5 fish per acre. Both lakes have bigger fish in them than Wingra. The fish are very fat in both of those lakes.
Mendota and Kegonsa do not have fish stocked in them. I wouldn't put my boat in to musky fish either lake.
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Posts: 334
Location: Madison, WI | Thanks for the confirmation of what i was told. Its not that i didnt trust those people but in the past I have found, more than once, i was told one thing only to keep me from a good area. I think for now ill stick to wingra, ill also try to attend that musky meeting on monday after work. Anything in particular i should have in my arsenal that works more often that not?? Ive got a wide assort in basic colors for a starter setup but like i said before the learning curve is huge, especially with musky fishing lol. |
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| Monona's density has dropped recently. According to Scot Stewart of the DNR it's now at 0.3/acre. Stocking numbers will be increased to get it back to 0.5/acre.
Some spinner baits, a few jerk baits, and a slowww-mo top water will do fine on Wingra. Put hour boat in 6' of water and start casting! |
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Posts: 633
Location: Madison, WI | Just fished the WMT tournaments this past weekend on Monona and Waubesa and so far this year my vote would lean towards Monona. The weeds are much nicer and more defined and even though the the water temps were considerably less than Waubesa we moved more fish on Monona. We happened to take 1st and 2nd place on glide baits but if you want to see fish for sure, go to wingra. However in my experience they are much more likely to eat baits on the other two lakes. Good Luck! |
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Posts: 334
Location: Madison, WI | Ive yet to fish monona, but I spent some time on waubesa yesterday and WOW. While we didnt manage to boat any fish we did manage 5 follows and saw multiple muskies just crusing the weeds that has some real size to them. Whatever we were doing wasnt good enough for them to bite and considering were both rookies im sure it was basic errors. Were going to try monona next saturday and probably waubesa again on sunday considering the new moon is next weekend. Were were getting action on double 8's, Jakes and shallow raiders . Maybe ill pick up some sort of glide bait since i have none. I know color didnt seem to matter as all were different colors on each follow. |
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Posts: 334
Location: Madison, WI | Oh and i will also add we were basically using fishing knowledge and guessing where to fish considering his boat does not have any electronics on it at all. Id say we didnt fish any deeper than 15' at the most. He is looking into getting a simple depth finder or something by next weekend haha |
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Posts: 334
Location: Madison, WI | What a change this weekend was from last weekend. Visibility is 10 fold worse than it was last weekend, debris in the water is increased as well. I only managed to rise 1 fish in the 10FOW range and it was a mid 20's at best. Only spotted a handful of crappies in that area compared to the tons of them in the weed line last weekend. I tried convicining my partners we should find the food and we might possibly find a musky. I explained that when we did get that fish to follow it was after seeing a small school of crappies just haning out in a clear spot in the weeds.
Is the water normally this thick with green cloud ?? The debris i can only imagine is from the river system but wow is that water ever dingy. No matter what i threw i couldnt pick it out until it was about 5 feet from the boat and only 2 feet down at best. Hopefully it levels off somewhat as summer kicks in.
Does anyone know if monona and wingra have the same issues right now?? |
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| These are very stained floage water lakes, fertile. Waubesa is green with 1' visibility in the summer. Monona a little more clear, but stained as well. Wingra has a huge milfoil problem, some spots are still fishable but you have to spend some time scouting it out. |
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Posts: 334
Location: Madison, WI | Does this normally adversly affect the fishing or am i just making up excuses of why i had an off day. I figured it wasnt just an excuse because of the lack of all fish, not just muskies, spotted in the shallows (1-6' range). |
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Location: The Yahara Chain | EsoxAddiction - 5/21/2012 5:59 PM
Does this normally adversly affect the fishing or am i just making up excuses of why i had an off day. I figured it wasnt just an excuse because of the lack of all fish, not just muskies, spotted in the shallows (1-6' range).
The conditions you describe do not adversely affect the fish. May on the bigger lakes is tough, always has been always will be. If your goal is to put fish in the boat, fish Wingra in May. Waubesa and Monona will pick up in June. |
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Posts: 334
Location: Madison, WI | Thanks for the tip, if im asking questions that have been discussed before i apologize. I tried searching waubesa and such and didnt find anything that helped. I do appreciate the insight and tips!!
Is there any particular reason for why they are so difficult during this time of year?? is it just the temp change?? |
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Location: The Yahara Chain | The big females you see in the shallows are recovering from the spawn, they just don't bite. Don't feel like you did anything wrong because those fish you saw in the shallows didn't respond to your lures, they don't respond to anybodies lures. The males are active and that is why most of the fish caught out there in May are in the 30's.
Wingra being much shallower and warmer has many more active fish during the first three weeks of the season. There always is a good shallow bite sometime in June on the bigger lakes. That bite will probably happen a little sooner than normal this year due to the fact that the lake temps are higher than normal this year. |
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Posts: 334
Location: Madison, WI | Bytor - 5/21/2012 11:07 PM
The big females you see in the shallows are recovering from the spawn, they just don't bite. Don't feel like you did anything wrong because those fish you saw in the shallows didn't respond to your lures, they don't respond to anybodies lures. The males are active and that is why most of the fish caught out there in May are in the 30's.
Wingra being much shallower and warmer has many more active fish during the first three weeks of the season. There always is a good shallow bite sometime in June on the bigger lakes. That bite will probably happen a little sooner than normal this year due to the fact that the lake temps are higher than normal this year.
Ive taken all that Ive read and all the advice from those that ive talked to and using that information, Ive been busy 
Ive noticed a definate spike in aggressivness of the fish over the past few weeks, they went from lazy slow follows to all out attacking of the lures. 37" isnt big to most but for my first real season of throwing lures im happy with what ive got.
Edited by EsoxAddiction 6/20/2012 12:24 AM
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