Hayward / St. Louis River, Wisconsin Fishing Report 7-21-13

A hot, humid, and windy Thursday afternoon was spent with the Evans gang from Indiana.  Mark and Matt Evans along with Mark’s father in law Doug DeBruhl spent a few hours with me catching smallies over deep structure on drop shot rigs.  High winds made it a little tough, but when we got the boat to stick the fish were there for us.  The largest, an 18″, was landed by Matt just in the nick of time.  A tanker musky was hot on its tail, and he looked serious about grabbing a mid afternoon smallmouth snack!  Water temps held at 80 degrees.  The highlight of the afternoon was watching Mark’s 3 year old son, Jeremiah land his first smallmouth off the dock.  Another Bass Master is in the making!  Thanks to the whole crew from Indy for another great time!

Jason Nault and his good friend Gus arrived from Chicago on a musky quest.  A cold front was expected to arrive, and with the forecast we were dealt the St. Louis River looked like a good option with 10 to 15 mph winds predicted.  Well, it was more like 25 to 30 mph all day!  It was blowing out of the northeast, making much of the harbor unfishable.  We were able to get at a few proven locations without a sighting so we switched gears to walleyes putting a few nice fish in the boat along with a 32″ pike.  Walleyes were caught in 4′ to 8′ of water on crawler harnesses, and water temps ranged from 72 to 74 degrees as the guys battled through difficult conditions to put some fish in the boat.

We moved inland on Saturday morning, and put a nice mixed bag of walleyes, crappies, and smallies in the boat.  Gus landed a giant 21.5″ smallie that looked like it’s been eating very well!  Action was fairly consistent throughout the morning along weed edges using leeches with water temps holding around 78 degrees.  In the afternoon, we decided to give muskies one last shot and moved to another lake.  Things looked promising at the start with Gus landing a pike right off the bat and Jason having a follow on our first spot.  Unfortunately, that was the end of the action.  We worked deep weed edges and open water adjacent to weeds with a variety of baits.  Water temps were still hot, 78 to 80 degrees, but you could feel the temperature dropping throughout the afternoon as a pretty stiff east wind picked up.  With cool nights predicted, it looks like we’ll have a much needed correction in water temps on our inland lakes.  Please remain very careful  with all fish you catch and plan to release at this time of year.  Handle them as little as possible, and get them in the water quickly to ensure they’ll bite again.

Thanks to Jason and Gus for two fun days of catching up, catching fish, and chasing muskies.  Jason, I think you’re now ready to catch a musky…  You’ve earned it!