By Jed “Big Musky” Buelow
Tomahawk Leader Co-Editor, Sports, Nature Editor
On Wednesday I was out fishing on a Tomahawk area flowage wearing shorts. Come this weekend, I suspect long johns and winter socks will replace the summer clothing as a big cold front is expected to drop temps and even bring the season’s first snow to the area.
Fall is a great time of the year to catch big fish. So when a buddy mentioned the slab crappies he was catching from a flowage in recent days it was a no-brainer what we would target on a warm and windy Wednesday afternoon.
We started out drifting jigs with crappie minnows in the couple spots he had caught big crappies just a few days prior. We spotted the fish on the electronics suspended in 14 feet of water. With the crappie not cooperating we shifted gears and moved on to try some different areas.
The first area we found fish was along a shoreline with wood that dropped sharply into the channel. The first several fish caught were some hard-fighting smallmouth bass. Then a couple small walleyes were caught as well as some perch. The wind continued to push us at a pretty steady pace and before long we were fishing a weed line that ran the length of the channel. Here we found some snake pike and some more perch that were caught and released.
Wanting to see if we could get a few fish for the table we doubled back to the shoreline that dropped steeply into the channel and before long had our first legal walleye caught on a hook and sinker tipped with a minnow. Here we also caught a bluegill and bullhead before another 16-inch walleye was caught on a mud minnow and let go into the live well.
Thinking that the crappies might turn on as evening rolled around, we headed back to the deep water structure where my friend had previously caught the fish. Nope. Turned out we caught just about everything else swimming in the lake outside of the fish we tried to target.
I think it will be pretty safe to say that after this upcoming weekend the fall turnover will take place on most, if not all, Tomahawk area bodies of water as a big change in weather is set to take place and the surface water temp was already down to 46 degrees on Wednesday.
Good luck to everyone heading out this week and coming weekend. Have fun and enjoy your Northwoods water time.