Tough cold weather bite at Wisconsin Dells

Cold weather got a firm grip on our area over the past week. Daytime temps topped out at 32 degrees and dropped down into the teens each night forcing water temps from 39 degrees down to 35 degrees by Saturday, March 26th.
According to the local weatherman, our average temps over the past 6 days was 10-15 degrees below normal for this time of the year.
The walleyes on the Wisconsin river certainly took notice and became much tougher to catch as a result of the falling water temps.

Facing an overnight low of around 18 degrees we were in no hurry to launch the boat. By 8:30am however, we figured we had waited long enough and it was time to face the cold and see if we could entice any walleyes or saugers into the boat.
High, fast flowing water was another factor but not as much of a concern to me as the cold was. As we put the boat on plane and made a quick run up river, my nose was not going to let me forget just how cold it was. Unfortunately, our first spot up river produced no fish and a decision was made to head downstream to check out a few spots which have been known to produce under similar high water conditions in the past.

We anchored up along the edge of a fairly large back eddy and began fan casting different colored jig/moxie combo’s in an effort to figure out what it was going to take to put some fish in the boat.
Matt Pistorio found the hot color and showed his ability at casting plastics for walleyes. His first fish of the morning was a nice 20 incher and although the bite was slow, he continued to put some fish in the boat through out the day. The 20 incher was out of the water for no more than a minute but by the time we finished snapping a few pictures, it’s fins were already showing signs of freezing. It was released quickly though and appeared to be unharmed from being caught, photographed and released.
The hot color was a 1/4oz sour apple precision jig tipped with a chartreuse pepper 4″ moxie. Dominic switched over to the same color in short order while I netted fish as needed and tried various different colors to pretty much totally disinterested walleyes. The only color & bait these walleyes had any interest in at all was the chartreuse pepper moxie. I did manage to land a smallie on a purple/chart tail ringworm but not a single walleye was caught on any color other than the chart/pepper.

By late morning, a few clouds had rolled in and the wind picked up making an already cold day even colder. There never was a time throughout the day when ice stopped building up on our line guides.
Although I prefer to use either Fireline Crystal or Suffix 832, on this day we all stuck to throwing jigs on mono due to all the ice that was forming on our line & line guides.
Live bait was tried and it did get hit once or twice early on in the day but we never did land any of those fish.
Our end of the day tally was 10 shorts, 2 legals, 2 overs and 2 smallies. Matt caught both of the larger walleyes which went 20″ & 22 inches.
I’m sure there will be better days ahead and I’m pretty sure the weather will be a lot more enjoyable as well.