Expectations were high heading to the Spooner area to fish mostly for largemouth bass. Eric Peterson and myself were soon to be joined by Jason Van Ert and Herbie Noetzel for our annual Wisconsin Opener bass fishing tourney. Eric and I were to fish against Jason and Herb. The team that catches the most 15 plus inch bass on Saturday wins a beverage of choice for each angler that evening. To really add meaning to the tourney the losers have to degrade their own angling skill while the winners consume the beverage of choice. 9 inch pumpkinseedUpon our arrival on Friday afternoon we hit the water for some catch and release bluegill action. The main lake water temp was 54 degrees. The bluegill were actively feeding in what I like to call tobacco cabbage (short darker cabbage) in 3-4 feet of water. The key to catching these bluegills in gin clear water was stealth. Long casts lobbed into the weeds produced some nice pumkinseeds and bluegill. Our lure of choice was the Shrimpo. See http://www.fishfever.com/node/111. Now with the water at 55 and a forecast for 70's over the weekend we were ready for some hot bassing. Fast forward to Saturday morning....the day is windy which we believe will only help our cause fishing but makes shooting video more difficult. Our strategy is to work both the inside and outside weed edge with jigs tipped with plastic worms and 5 inch grubs. The bass were fairly active but the pike were on fire (not that we wanted them to be). For the better part of the day we caught bass from 10-15 inches consistently with the best action coming in saddle areas between mid-lake humps. Not exactly were we thought we'd pound fish but we found a nice school in a small mid-lake saddle about 7 feet deep. To sum up the Saturday fishing in my boat we caught about 50 bass, 30 pike, 12 crappies many eating a 7.5 inch plastic worm, a few gills, a couple rock bass and a perch. Jason's boat produced a similar number of bass but fewer pike and 1 small muskie about 32 inches. We never boated a true quality fish except a few nice crappies. Eric lost at least 10 Gami jigs to the slimers but the Twins did beat the Tigers with a rally in the bottom of the 9th! Tourney score was tied at 4 and the big bass tie-breaker produced another tie so we agreed to continue into Sunday. Sunday the water temperature was 57 and we thought for sure the bass would be tight to the inside weed line in 3-6 feet. The wind was non-existent at 8 am and we stalked the inside weed lines attached to a mid-lake humps. Cast 2 produced a 15 plus inch largemouth and the game was on. With the wind beginning to pick up from the south we continued to work our plan with limited success so we went to the bank to check for shallow fish. The pike of course were still on the move shallow but the bass fishing had slowed considerably so at about 1pm we pulled the boats and headed towards smaller darker water with the tourney score 5-4 in favor of my boat. Lake 2 on Sunday afternoon the water temp was 63! This lake is relatively new to me but with water temp at 63 we had renewed confidence. We'd fished bass here last year on the Sunday of opener in 53-degree water and we found a good bite in about 10 feet of water using black plastic worms with bass up to 18 inches. A dead stick approach worked best last year so we fished similarly on Sunday. The bass on Lake 2 were as sluggish as they were on the large, clear colder lake. We did find some fish that responded to our presentations on a steep break and with the wind in full howl Herb boated a 18.5 inch fish at about 5pm. That fish put Eric and I in a 9-6 hole. Frustrated we made the call to head for home at about 5:30. On the way home we settled our contest debt. The weekend produced less than the expected results. The female fish were almost non-existent but we did get bites and that's the main thing about the Wisconsin opener.
Submitted by Pete on Wed, 05/10/2006 - 11:40am.
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