chequamegon report – Smallies – 8/6 – 8/8

For the most part was slow for us on the bay last weekend. Caught small mouth on sucker minnows primarily. What they call ‘walleye’ suckers up there. They were caught in 12 – 17 ‘ on top of or near weeds. You can’t get suckers up there easily – trappers are having a bad year. So if you go up there this fall make sure to call Ashland bait stores to check on stock. My main observation after fishing CB for a while now – the smallies turn on and off up there like no fish I have ever seen. You could have a morning where you catch 20 in 4 hours, then same afternoon you are skunked. So my advice to people would be patience is key. Just because you go even 2 hours without a bite does not necessarily mean you’re on the wrong pattern. Second, I was stumped as to why so few boats out there. So few small mouth / walleye fisherman anywhere. For two three nights in a row saw maybe 1 or 2 boats. Maybe people don’t fish small mouth – /walleye summer as much there? If anyone has a comment on that I would be interested to know. Third you can’t trust the weather apps in the Bay as it relates to wind. Every day they projected 10-13 mph out of the SW. It was out of SW primarily, but was in actuality maybe 3-5 out there for most part.

I have a distant friend who has a family near Bayfield and he seems to do pretty well there. He mostly uses tubes and kietech swim baits.

We were in Washburn on Friday, we took the kids up there on the RZR’s. It looked pretty quiet out there. I saw 1 Ranger on the coal dock cleaning fish but couldn’t see what he caught. We are planning to fish up there more next summer when I have a better spot to keep my boat and RZR’s so I don’t have to trailer them all the time.

Rapto, you have hit the nail on the head….I always tell friends/clients that in an 8 hr day of fishing we may have 2 hours of very poor fishing. Current really makes a difference with the smallmouth bite. This past week…most of our big smallies have been in 2 to 4 ft of water. Then yesterday our bite was in 24 ft of water. Fish are definitely in the weedbeds….but they are driving us crazy following all day like muskies. Need to have quite the arsenal of baits as one day the swimbaits are hot and next they are eating jerkbaits or spinnerbaits. I always have a Marabou jig ready to throw if the bite is tough. The dang smallies are using all 30,000 acres of the bay this time of year.

Thanks cbeeksma I will keep a Marabou handy moving forward.

Are you concerned with, seemingly imo, the rise of the Pike in the Bay?