bass fishing (waukesha county, wi)

Spent the day fishing with my buddy Neal. I picked him up early and headed north to fish a few different Waukesha county lakes. The journey was pretty painless other then the slight navigation error which put us behind twenty minutes or so. The fact that we were a little slow getting there wasn’t completely a bad thing because the last quarter of our drive we watch some nasty storms roll over the entire county. Even after arriving we had a number of intermittent small storms roll through the area . One minute it would be sunny and the next thunder and lightning would warn you of the approaching rain shower. It was like that all day long and the fishing seemed to be better during the times it was raining. Neal thought that it hid our presence better from the wary game fish in these crystal clear waters.


Lake 1

the channel that opens up to Lake 1

We used some different presentations given the circumstances. Spent some time trolling live bait harnesses and spoons, dropshoting finesse plastics, and mini-mites and live bait under slip bobbers.

The dropshot accounted for the majority of our fish and was especially deadly when working the deep drop-offs. You were even in better shape if you could find the isolated patches of weeds located close to where the bottom began to taper off. We tried some different shapes and sizes of worm but the fish ate a purple zoom 4 inch finesse worm the best. We landed maybe a dozen bass on that zoom worm. Here’s a couple of my better largemouths.

a nice bass

another nice bass

Trolling live bait on bottom bouncers gave up only one strike from a meager bass that I lost half way to the boat. We took a fair amount of pan fish on mini-mites and crawler pieces. We even landed a rock bass and a tiny perch that would have been better suited for the fish tank.

me with my friend Bill the gill

rock bass

Lake 2

can you say portage?

neal strecthing his legs after our portage to Lake 2

Halfway through our fishing day we made a portage to a different body of water. The tunnel was narrow and we had to carry the canoe through to the other side. We managed a couple small bass on this side but from what I saw they were not nearly prevalent as they were on Lake 1. I’m glad we spent some time exploring Lake 2 because we picked up some awesome bonus fish that more then made up for the smaller and more inconsistent largemouth fishing.

Here’s my one and only fish (a rainbow trout) that I took on a slip-bobber and minnow combination. The fish took the hook deep and couldn’t be revived so it came home for dinner.

a bonus stocker rainbow trout

Here’s Neal’s bonus fish (a nice smallmouth bass) that crushed the dropshot and worm combo right on the drop-off.

a smallie to top off the day

I had a great time on the water today with Neal. We caught a lot of species of fish, and even though none of them were lake monsters it still felt good to bend a rod during the holiday weekend. Happy multi-species Monday, Happy Labor Day and god-speed to the salmon making their way to the tributaries to spawn.