[Jason]

I managed to catch and release 3 beautiful wild brown trout and rainbow from a spring fed stream here in southern WI. I am sure if I had a fly rod and some natural looking flies I could've had more luck but, the amount of fish I seen, the scenery, and the fresh air made up for the slow action. Just watching these trout was fun enough. I wish I would've hooked into this one brook trout I seen follow my hair jig in. Here are some photos, notice the beautiful red markings on the brown trout. Also, the last photo was flipped upside down because it looks pretty trippy.....

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[Fishin Dan]

Bass fishing has been good this spring. Spent most of my time throwing suspending jerk baits, senkos, and jigs. Depending on the lake, caught fish from 3 fow to 20 fow, but most have been shallow. Here are a few highlights from the boys.

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This post has been edited by Fishin Dan: 07 June 2009 - 09:19 PM

[collinfishes]

did alittle river fishing yesterday and had a blast. finally got my hands on a fly rod again and caught a ton of carp between me and joe. had atleast 6 doubles which always make it fun. also some bluegills, suckers, little browns, and a mystery fish mixed in for fun. heres a picture of the mystery fish. joe got into some last year and if i remember right its a white perch. im almost positive its not a white bass. but i could be way off.

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[sruege]

Hit a favorite quarry sunday and man lost count on the # of gills and hybrids every cast..made it fun! some gills went 9-10 fun day! tubes and #2 mepps silver with white skirt did the damage! ..good fishing
shane

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[deno b.]

Made it up to Eagle River this past week. Stayed on Carpenter Lake to do some bass fishing. Most of the Smallies were off of the beds and the largemouth were just moving in. The weather was not the greatest lots of wind. Water temps ranged from 57-62 degrees.

The hot baits were senkos, x-raps, and rogues. I also fished butternut lake on friday with limited success. The wind was brutal.

Caught my biggest smallmouth on carpenter, pictured was 20 and half inches. Lots of fun, love the way they fight. Water levels were down on alot of the lakes up there, made it a challenge lauching the boat. Go get em. Dean

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[Doors]

Got out again for crappies yesterday and fishing was fanastic.
We caught these in hour and a half of fishing!
Friday we are having a neighborhood fish fry; can't wait!
Once nice largemouth too that was released.
Crappie are just about done spawning in northeast wisconsin.

The largemouth was taken with a camera phone; I thought it looked pretty good for a camera phone.

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This post has been edited by Doors: 27 May 2009 - 07:19 PM

[collinfishes]

did alittle pond fishin yesterday and did pretty good again. fished for panfish and we caught a ton gills and crappies. a bunch of doubles which are always fun no matter how big the fish are. got some small bass and missed a few tricky carp too. all fish on little curlys and tubes.

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[Jason]

LM LUNATIC, get a tape measure that is flexible and take girth and length measurments. Then take a photo the fish and get a replica. Some replicas are top notch, realistic, and they don't shrink or tare like skin mounts. Some people hate replicas but that is because they see crappy replicas. There are crappy skin mounts to. That fish is still able to spawn though because of you so good job on the release man....

[LM Lunatic]

Nice mess of crappies Doors. Went out with Bass Abductor for 4 hrs today we wailed on the smallies. Caught 3 of em that were very nice, biggest was in the 6 lb range and a tad over 21 inches. The belly on this fish was bulging with eggs. Water temp was 58-59 and most fish were on a prespawn feeding binge. Caught around 40 smallies and a few largemouth that were decent sized. Used cranks, jerkbaits, tubes, and a secret lure that BA caught over half the fish on. Water was calm and clear and couldnt believe how many fish were visible in the 10-14 ft range. We saw a school of crappies and fished them for about 15 minutes and caught 4 that were in the 13-15 inch range. We ended up releasing everything, that smallie would have made a nice mount but the eggs kept us from going that route. Great time, hope to do it again soon, maybe tomorrow

[Doors]

Fished for lm bass this morning and didn't have any luck. Found lots of crappie though.

The crappie are still in pre-spawn just about to start spawning.
We caught our 50 crappie in 2 hours this morning.
Little pieces of gulp under a bobber with a med/quick retrieve
Lost just as many as we caught.

My neighbor only caught one crappie before today.

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[collinfishes]

got out to one of my favorite ponds today and did alright. got into a bunch of crappies and finally got into some nice gills even had one snap me off not really sure what happened there hah but they do fight. got a lot of little bass from 17in all the way down. lost one piggy shoulda let em take it a little longer. got it up to the surface and it popped off. missed quite a few carp on bread before they all headed to the surface to eat the algae stuff that was floatin off the bottom. all fish were on little jigs. some bass on lipless cranks and spinners even got a monster 10incher on a pike harasser hah. nice fish guys

[Jason]

Been fishing at my favorite secret fishing hole every evening and slamming the gills, bass, and warmouths on ultralight equipment. I kept the fish the other night and you can see them pics on my past post here but I have been releasing at least 40-60 huge,fat, egg filled females every evening. The biggest bass was 15 inches long and caught by my fiance Michelle. We are'nt even fishing bass, but they hit our panfish baits and nightcrawlers. I caught some real slob bluegills this past week and, I hope my secret fishing hole has a future for years to come with these fish. That is unless people keep everything they catch, then the pond is doomed. I have seen a few people showing up and it makes me nervous because a few of them take home limits of gills but, with over populating comes stunting so there is a balance I guess.

If any of you know a small lake,pond, or quarry with nice sized panfish get outthere now for this prespawn bite. They are hungry and very feisty on ultralight gear....

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[deno b.]

Was up in the Lacrosse area over the weekend.Caught some beautiful crappies, average size i'm sure was 11 inches. The wind on Sat. made it real hard to fish, was not able to get out on the lake there were whitecaps out there so fished the channels. Awesome catching slab crappies. Going up to carpenter lake up in Eagle River this weekend to target smallmouth, can't wait. Here are some pics from this past weekend. Good Fishing Dean

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[Jason]

Fished Lake Michigan yesterday in the Summerfest Lagoon and landed a 18 pound brown trout on a nightcrawler. I was fishing for whatever bites and all I had with me was a 1/32 ounce jighead and a 10 foot ultralight rod spooled with 6 pound test line. What a battle that fish was and, if I can get the pics off my cellphone I will post them. She was a beautiful silver looking fish, and she is still swimming....

Also, I did really well at a secret pond I fish with the bluegills saturday evening and sunday evening. My fiance Michelle and I kept 25 for the frying pan. I only keep bluegills from this pond maybe 2-3 times a year out of fear of overfishing it. I know that if they over populate that they will become stunted so, there has to be a balance. The pond is becoming more and more popular but, I keep it a secret out of fear it will be fished out in no time. It's my little gem close to home. Here are some pics.....

JOE....Nice smallies and steelheads. Your buddy and me both tangled with beasty trout on ultralight equipment this past weekend it looks like.....

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[Joe Murphy]

Went to the cabin this weekend too see whats up caught a mess of smallies and a few bonus steelies mixed in which was awesome seeing as how I've only seen 2 other steelies caught after growing up on the lake...super rare so we were really pumped about it.




we doubled up a couple times, no monsters but still fun






nothin like a bonus...they fight a tad better than the smallies




Buddy Luke got this on my 6 ft lite action rod...he got worked by this fish.

[collinfishes]

got back out to a pond today for alittle while. fished brush piles with the ole cane pole and couldnt keep the crappies off our jigs. even a few bass mixed in. all the crappies were 6-10in. nothing huge but still fun.

[deno b.]

Those are some beautiful fish Eric, smallies are so cool looking. Keep up the good work!!!

[collinfishes]

fished all over the place today. me and joe started at the lake and it was way to choppy out there with 5-6 waves. so we went to the river and joe schooled me in some carp fishin. he went like 12-18. the carp didnt like me haha. then we went pond jumpin and fished like 6 or 7 ponds we never fished before and put the hurtin on some pan fish and joe came and got a nice bass. i didnt even try for some bass i was havin to much fun gettin craps and little 10in bass. we only fished each one for less than an hour. only 1 didnt have fish, one had only small gills but the others all had a nice variety and nice size fish. also got the first ticks of the year on us. me and ticks dont get along at all hah. nice smallies guys!

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[Eric Haataja]

Nice fish Joe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This past week was as good as it gets here in southern WI for not only catching numbers of big smallies but my favorite...BIG SMALLIES

2 best techniques were jerk baits and jigs and the jig caught a lot or most of our big fish! 3/8 ounce Rock Stalker jigs in the pumpkin has to be the best big smallie jig I've used. Best depths were8-18 feet of water!

We averaged 30-40 smallies almost every trip out. I love spring time! Heading back out in a few minutes!

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[Joe Murphy]

fished smallies every day from opening day through friday. Caught over a hundred smallies with 80% of them over 18 inches with plenty in the 20-23 inch range, plastics were key, a few spinnerbait fish, with the 4 inch yellow powergrub rocking the house lighting it up nasty style. Went through 4 bags of em. Only problem is with the jighead on the powergrubs makes it real easy for the fish to jump and throw the bait. Northland jigheads are too thin gauge and had to be barbless to be legal. Couldnt even tell you how many fish i had jump off or lost at the side of the boat. Dint care when i lost fish because there were so many others everywhere. Sight fishing in 3 ft of crystal clear water. only gonna post a few pics but my camera is loaded with toads. Got a bunch of video too just gotta edit out some downtime between fish so its not a 3 hour vid. Fished solo for 5 days so had to do the auto timer thing so most of them are off center and in the cameras "grill" sorry for jammin fish up close but it was the only way. Too bad i couldnt keep any otherwise i'd have some mounts of some 22/23 inchers.


buddy with an inland toad




buddys biggest to date