Turtle Flambeau Flowage, Iron County

"NO FISH NO PAY GUARANTEED"

Started out sunny and then turned cloudy in the afternoon and a little cooler as the sun went away. Our pics were taken before it cooled off. A a south wind is continuing. Rain is in the forecast and is coming this week.

These guys enjoyed the beauty of the T.F.F. and caught Walleye from 8 AM to 4 PM. It did not mater the color of our jig, today. Put it down and Bang!  We did get some smaller Walleye on bobbers but, "bobbers are good" and do "produce very well", in certain areas, for us. A simple jig and minnow is what we used today (along with some trolling)  and we did well.

The Walleye are moving into different locations and some spots are good today and not the next. We also find that some areas that were not good yesterday but, are good today. One thing that is very important “to us” is, slow is very good for the presentation.

Trolling was also used and did produce 3 Walleye and yes, they were the best sized fish. Color does matter for trolling, “for us”. This is an under utilized technique on the T.F.F. and yes, a few people troll but, very few. This works and should be experimented with for a good change of pace if nothing else.

My clients are enjoying the happiness of the north during this time of year, as many, many other fishermen are also doing. Everyone involved is supporting our communities and there business’s.

As always, stay positive, think clearly, do not listen to negative talk and do not listen to negative people.

God Bless        John Andrew

 

Congrats on the productive week Jeff.   Inspiring to me stuck in Milwaukee til the Muskie opener.   Thanks for sharing 

We have a woodburner in our house, some of my favorite fires of the year are after a day like today, mid May when you think you're done burning wood for the year. I wasn't watching the clock but sometime around late morning I was down to a t-shirt, I'm guessing it was mid seventies. At days end after the 6 mile ride back to the landing, the hand wrapped around the tiller handle was numb, temp 46*. The water went from almost flat to a big rollers, sunny skies to clouds, and a 30* temp drop in a couple of hours. Customer Larry and I fished a full 8 hours . We had enough action on walleyes , the cold did trigger one big fish to bite, our last fish was a thick 22" we released.

To some extent it was one of those you should have been here yesterday days. I would say yesterday was the best bite of the year so far (for us), it was one of those days when everything seemed to be active. I did fish a long day, from 8am to 8pm, we boated 35-40 walleyes, a batch of big perch, smallmouth, many pike(one around 30", big for the tff) had two muskies on, netted one and the other close. We fished probably 20 spots and caught a fish of some species on all but two. Tried one 12' spot for a zero, think the other zero was shallow boulders. The winning pattern was wood structure in 4-6', we did have one area with a mix of stumps, hard sand and rock in 7-8' that gave up several perch and walleyes, also the musky brought to the net along with an abundance of rock bass.

Morning trip yesterday with father and son, Paul and his 86 year old father Jim was special, 86 years old and still a good touch for catching fish on a 1/16 oz. jig.

Had a good week of fishing, as always they don't jump in the net every day, Monday was probably our slower day though we still managed some keeper walleyes.

HRG hope you and Joe had a great stay hope to run into you next time.

Great nighttime fishing the last week,casting Countdown Rapalas and Thundersticks does the job at night.

You might want to reread my posts. I never said there wouldn't be ice... I said the flowage would be open. Did you not fish opening day? If not too bad, the flowage WAS OPEN. Too bad you were misinformed and didn't participate. A picture is a picture, but more importantly a fact is a fact.

Haven't had time to post pictures, here's a few from last few days.

Beelzbob

Nice to see a post from you. We fished shallow today also, they weren't jumping in the boat but we caught 8 walleyes, some perch and several smallmouth. Six of the walleyes were from 16-18" quality fish for the tff, the father and son fisherman I had today wanted just enough for a shore lunch and a couple to take home, we released the four biggest walleyes. Nothing wrong with keeping a limit of fish, but also nice when customers want to release them. If we would have kept all the perch and walleyes caught it would have been a pretty impressive catch for a flat, calm, sunny day.

A few different areas in 4-8' with big diameter stumps and some shore line wood accounted for most of the fish. Customer Ted opted to throw a half crawler the last couple hours and had as many bites as son Kyle and I did on jig and minnow.

After lunch we tried some shallow boulders for bass and found them vacant. Our smallmouth came from stumps and on the edge of mid lake  flat they spawn on, near stumps.