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Posts: 63
| I fish the Northern Illinois, Southern Wisconsin area as much as possible and I've got to admit, this has been a frustrating 2nd half. After boating some decent fish up until mid-July, I have only seen 2 fish for the last 25 hours on the water. Yes, the weekends have been cold and winds from the evil northeast, but they have to eat sometime right?
What I'm wondering is this, when I go back to the shallow weed beds that produced muskies in June and July, I now see 5-10 boats circling the same areas every-single-day - no matter the time of day. We're not throwing the same stuff. Are you catching them on bucktails while I'm slowing it down with that glide bait? Is it possible these fish have all been conditioned and moved on? Maybe some of you have figured it out and I'd be grateful to learn what you do when the fish have all been caught at least once. How smart are they?
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Location: Contrarian Island | timing is everything.. I fish Madison quite a bit... I've seen boats pound an area for hours, nobody catches a thing..they all leave.. I stay and we get a bunch of hits in an hour .. being where they are, when they decide to bite is the biggest key imo to pressured waters...(any waters for that matter) if you have confidence in an area or spot... stick it out.. the fish will show up when they get active... the fish have all the control of when we catch them.
Edited by BNelson 10/9/2018 10:25 AM
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Posts: 176
| I feel your pain having boats in the areas you want to fish in Southern Wisconsin. It's not only there but all over, I made the same comment on both Eagle and Lake of The Woods this summer. We fish the area you talk about quite often and it's about windows, when they open have your lure in the water.
This past Saturday morning, cold windy and rainy, there were three boats launching with us in the dark, two of them ended up in the same area we went to. I caught one at first light with another boat two casts away. The previous weekend we went out in the afternoon and went to a spot that had a boat with cameras sticking out all over it, (Porcupine boats) we headed around the big spot and waited until they moved off the spot we wanted, (it's no wake so you can't run around as much), we slid in and popped our fish. There were three guys in the porcupine boat beating that area to a froth prior to our casting there, but our first cast on a surface bait on a blind figure 8 nailed a very nice fish.
The fish don't know, their brain says feed and they feed, otherwise it's just tinsel on a Christmas tree; sparkly and shiny, and looks nice, but it's not the present to be unwrapped until the window opens! |
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Posts: 4269
Location: Ashland WI | I would agree with this. Timing can be everything. The more time you put on the water, the better chance you are there when they are biting.
As anglers, I think we can get stuck over analyzing things often. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to learn and get better, but the longer I do this , it makes me realize more and more there is only so much we can do. |
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