Musky Shop Northwoods Fishing Report: Late August
Hi everyone, fishing in the beautiful Northwoods of Wisconsin has been very good. Muskies, Walleyes, Bass and Panfish are all quite active. Our guide and staff member Fred Palermo has been on Crappies all season and continues to have great success for his clients. Freddie is a multipurpose guide and has a great grasp on many species. He has been finding a lot of his Crappie catches around weeds and wood in the 11'-19' range depending on the type of lakes. The deeper clear bodies of water Crappies are a bit deeper and the darker water systems the Crappies are a touch shallower. Crawlers, Crappie Minnows, XL Fatheads, on slip bobbers have been working great.
Bass fishing has been outstanding. Staff member Al Frost and guide staff member Matt Raley are having very good seasons. Frosty had a great afternoon and evening trip where they caught a bunch of really nice Smallmouth Bass, Largemouth Bass and a few Walleyes. Al and his client were fishing deep Sand grass with sand/gravel humps. They were catching smaller fish on the 15'-18' humps, but they moved a bit deeper in the 20-25' range and the fish got much larger.
They were moving very slowly using crawler harnesses with a spinner blade tipped with a Leech or Nightcrawler, a XL Fathead, or Redtail or Blacktail chub will work too. They had a ton of fun. Frosty also had a client catch a 44" Tiger Musky a day or two after as well which capped off, I believe a 3 fish day. The Tiger hit a Mepps Giant Killer on a weed edge.
Matt Raley is always on fish no matter what species. Matt and his Tournament partner have won countless Musky engagements and in my opinion are one of the best fishing duos anywhere. They have had consistent success for many years which is really hard to do in Musky Fishing. Any kind of tournament success is really quite difficult but Musky fishing tournaments is quite frankly in my humble opinion very hard and to have many years of winning and placing in Musky Tournaments is quite an accomplishment.
Matt always knows what's going on with fish locations, and the best way to catch them. Matt and his clients are having a great season. One of his clients boated a really nice 45.5" Muskie. Matt has been hitting deeper weed edges with soft plastics such as Chaos Medussas, Posseidons, Alpha Dawgs and Red October Tubes.
Muskies have been positioning near the main lake weed edge and depending on wind, weather and the time of day will slide out a bit or slide up in the weeds but primarily are near the edge.
All of our guide staff members that I have not mentioned yet are all having outstanding seasons Matt (Mad Dog) Dassow, Doug (Big Ticket) Smith, Tim (The Mayor) Ives, Josh (Champion) Kreger, Jimmy Schulta, Steve (Herbie) Herbeck. Dan Gropengiser, Jamie Johnson, Steven Paul, Tracy Crail.
All have had clients catch some really big Muskies this season. They all have great knowledge of the vast array of lakes in Northern Wisconsin. Steve Herbeck has great knowledge of Eagle Lake in Ontario Canada. Steven Paul has an extensive knowledge of Oneida and Vilas county WI, but his main base of operation is on his home waters of Tennessee. Tracy Crail specializes in Musky guiding on Iowa waters that have Muskies and is always on the bite.
All are having current success fishing the deep edges. Spanky bucktails, Giant Killers, and RJ bucktails run a bit deeper. Here are the soft plastics our guide staff and clients are having fishing success with: Medussa, Pounders, and Red October Tubes.
Our hope is that our fishing report will help you have success when you hit the water. Please let us know if we can be of service to you. "If You Don't Know Ask A Pro". It will be our pleasure to serve you.