Fall Sauger Bonanza on Lake Wisconsin
The mid to late October sauger bite on Lake Wisconsin has been very good. With water temps in the low 50’s, I have been primarily targeting these fish in western half of Lake Wisconsin simply due to the fact that there are more areas with the preferred structure and depth that they are relating to. Roughly from the Village of Merrimac all the way to the Prairie du Sac dam, there are a series of bays, main lake points, and in some cases, secondary points within the bays, where we are finding good numbers of legal size saugers. These fish are fairly easy to locate with electronics and once found, are susceptible to a variety of presentations.
The saugers that I have been fishing, have been loosely relating to main lake and secondary points, as well as deep flats. I have also been finding some fish in the main channel itself. What I have been doing to locate fish, is to slowly motor across the mouths of bays and across the associated point on each side of the bay. Trust in your electronics to show you these saugers as banana shaped “hooks” or sonar returns on your display. We are finding these fish both scattered across the bottom in 15’ to 24’, as well as in schools relating to shad. We are also finding schools of crappies suspended in these same areas from 7’ to 10’ down in 15’-24’ feet of water. These fish show up as a more “bean” shaped sonar return on my Lowrance HDS2 electronics. These crappies are catchable as well with appropriate presentations to target them. In some instances we are seeing both saugers and crappies suspended in the same area. In these cases, the fish have been relating to schools of shad.
Mornings have typically been a jig & plastic or a jig & minnow bite. I have been presenting either a ¼ or 5/16th oz chartreuse colored jig tipped with either a 3” Moxi from BFISHN Tackle or a plain minnow hooked through the lips on a Northland Fireball jig. Other plastics such as ring worms will work as well, but I like the Moxi in both orange core and chartreuse pepper as it has more of a shad profile which is the dominant forage in Lake Wisconsin. I’ve been using a very subtle jigging motion to coax these bites. In cool water periods, remember to apply scent such as Smelly Jelly to your plastics.
As the day progresses and the jig bite slows, I have been switching over to pulling Northland Tackle’s parakeet colored Gum-Drop floating jigs heads tipped with a minnow on a 3’ leader behind a 1.5 oz bottom bouncer to produce some extra fish before leaving an area in search of more active fish. Experiment with hooking the minnow both up through the bottom of the head, and down through the top of the head to see which produces more bites -minnow right side up or upside down.
I suspect Lindy rigging would be very effective on these fish as well. While we’ve been catching a few walleyes mixed in with these saugers, if you want to target walleyes you should focus your efforts shallower in the 5’-12’ range for the next week or two.
Tight Lines,
Gary Sanders
Lake Wisconsin Walleyes, LLC