Wisc. River - Nekoosa (Walleyes)

Went to the river yesterday morning and fished up until 7 pm. Tried many different spots on shore. White bass are nowhere to be found. Not sure exactly why, but I believe next weekend will be prime time run for them. Save yourself a trip from this weekend and find time for the next one. Good luck and hope this helps! 

Hi, I was thinking about coming down to nekoosa tomorrow. ​Has anyone been catching anything or is it worth going?

Was wondering any thoughts with the warm up if the whitebass run should pick up?

The last few trips have been good despite the wind and goofy barometric pressure trend. 

One of the trips was a catch and release, white bass focused, trip. We caught a lot of but we worked hard for them. Only finding small schools made it tough. We still landed around 30 wb with some walleyes mixed in. We did get into a bunch of 12-14 inch smallies to break things up. 

Another trip was half day and we were focused on catching whatever bit but we were very limited on places to fish due to the wind. We managed a few legal walleyes, a bunch of shorts and a few white bass and smallies along with a pike that was released immediately to keep the slime out of my boat! 

The third trip was also a half day and all about walleyes. I did a lot of side imaging before stopping on the right fish but we eventually found them and caught
A lot of fish in 4 hours. At least 25 hit the net with two being slots and a few legals. If course, a few giant pre-spawn white bass showed up as well! 

If mother nature would slow the wind blow for more than 12 hours so a guy could put a pattern together that would be great! Instead, every day has been a new adventure fishing completely different areas and adjusting on the fly. 

Hair jigs best for white bass. Plastics best for walleyes with crawlers and minnows a close second.

Fishing remains OK in the river if you're willing to do a little looking around. Still walleyes to be caught but there's a lot of fish moving out to the lake. We were forced to fish the river this morning with the big SW winds. Very few places that you could hide from it. The current was pretty slow and water temps remain in the mid-50s. We caught fish in all but one place we stopped today. Only one sheep and one white bass. The rest walleyes. Everything released today and likely everything tomorrow will be released as well, as my groups aren't looking to keep fish. 

I'll have a more detailed report later this week. It is becoming evident that some people are doing nothing more than hunting through reports and photos across various internet sources and following other boats rather than finding fish for themselves. For the time being, my reports and some other guides will be slowing our posts and information train until the lake fires up more and fish spread out some. Everyone knows I love helping fellow anglers out but it's getting a little ridiculous with the requests and "drive-bys" on the water.

I along with a couple other guides don't NEED to make these reports as often as we do on here and FB. I'm booked out almost two months solid with trips well into 2027 already. 

Tight lines everyone! The post spawn bite is great if the wind would lay down long enough to get to the fish! 

Hey Thomas, thanks for letting us know what's happening out there! It is truly appreciated. Hope to talk to you at the landing again somewhere this year.

Jon and Corey booked for a full day on the lake. With the wind we opted to stay out of the main lake today. It was almost a repeat of yesterday with numbers of walleyes and white bass caught. We boated a total of 10 legals today with at least 75 total eyes a lot of white bass, two drum and one cat. Minnows, crawlers and plastic again. At one point I put a plastic on an orange 1/4 ounce jig and caught a fish and then switched out plastics every time I caught a fish just to see if there was something they wouldn't eat. After about an hour I had a pile of baits sitting next to me with nothing they wouldn't eat. I was worried that the front that pushed through last night would have shut them off but that definitely wasn't the case! Water temp was down a touch from yesterday to about 55-56 degrees. We fished different spots than yesterday because the fish moved slightly deeper and into more current. 

Went fishing today launched at Freeman noticed I did lose a tacklebox. The guy that found one could you please call me? I don’t know how to message you. If you could call me appreciate it number is 262-622-3278 name is Dan.

Thank you Thomas. I appreciate the response. I will be there tomorrow late morning. Hope I have a quarter of the luck you had!

73challenger, the current is perfect. About 10,000 cfs as I type this. Water clarity is good. Just enough current to push fish to seams and edges and predictable areas but not enough to blow everything out.