Musky Shop Northwood's Fishing Report: Late June
We hope everyone is having a great summer and a great fishing season. Fishing in the Northwoods of Wisconsin has been pretty solid so far. Lots of fish have been caught. Crappies and panfish have been hanging anywhere from the shoreline structure to near the weed edge in the 5'-10' range. Crappie Scrubs and soft plastics work great for crappie and panfish as well as Crappie Minnows, Worms, and Leeches. One of our guides Fred Palermo has been closely following the crappie bite all year and if that is your fish of choice, we would be happy to hook you up with Fred or any of our other guides.
The walleye bite has also been very good. Late dusk and after dark have been the best times to catch them; though daytime walleye fishing has delivered, it's just a bit better during low light. Two of our guides Matt Dassow and Doug Smith have been catching some nice walleye this summer. They are getting pretty good numbers during daylight hours but evening and after dark they have caught some nice trophy sizes. During daylight, walleye have been caught near the weed edges and deeper rock piles on XL Fatheads, Redtails, Blacktails Night Crawlers, and Leeches as well as artificial baits such as Floating Rapalas, Rapala Jigging raps, and a variety of mid-size to large crankbaits.
Bass fishing has been great this year. Tons of smallmouth bass and largemouth bass have been caught from the shoreline to the weed edge on a variety of baits. Spinnerbaits, crankbaits, crawlers, leeches, and minnows have all been working.
Now for muskies, the musky bite has been solid so far this summer. A bit up and down but that is almost always the case for muskies. The largest predator fish in the lake usually makes us work for our success. Our guides have been doing quite well and are finding muskies a bit scattered but it seems like the majority of them have been hanging near the weed edge.
Sometimes they will move up into the weeds a bit and then move out to the edge and then move out off the edge suspending over the basin. Even though they might be suspending out over deep water they have not been down particularly far. So far this season many of the suspended muskies have been in the upper 10' of the water column. The weed fish and edge fish can be caught using bucktails, glide baits, twitching cranks, and shallow-running soft plastics.
For the suspended muskies, Red October Tubes in the mid-depth are outstanding as well as the other baits previously mentioned. Our guide staff member, Josh Kreger, has caught a lot of really nice muskies this season on Red October Tubes. So far this season the surface bite has not been active yet but it will as we move further into summer.
Well, that's it for now, we hope you all have a great summer and get to do a lot of fishing. Fishing for all species and especially musky fishing is such a wonderful sport, we wish you all a great fishing season. Please contact us if you would like to book one of our Fishing Guides or if we can be of service to you as it would be our pleasure: Musky Shop Guide Service. Additionally, you are all invited to our Musky Bash on Saturday, July 15th noon-4:00 pm We have a great Guest Speaker and Pro Panel that will be here under a huge tent in our spacious North parking area. There will be many vendors, sales, food, and more so hopefully you can join us for a very fun-filled and informative event.
God Bless and Good Fishing, Jim Stewart