August 12, 2017 Fishing Report – Big Green Lake, Wisconsin
August of 2017 has been very mild with most days being in the mid to upper 70’s with low humidity. In short, it’s been absolutely beautiful. It a far cry from the humid and unstable weather that June/July brought.
This past weekend we hit Big Green Lake, Wisconsin in search of bluegills. And we were also testing out the iPilot and iPilot Link functionality of my new Minn Kota Terrova 80 which is linked to my Humminbird Helix 9 SI GPS until.
With an open bass tournament of over 60 boats going on, we decided to target pan fish. We found the bigger bluegills down in 20+ feet of water just off the deep weed edge. We used the Humminbird Helix to locate the schools and the Minn Kota SpotLock functionality (which is amazing!) to hover over the schools and target them with worm tipped Tungsten Toads under Thill Pro Series slip bobbers. When the school moved and we stopped marking fish, we used the remote control for the Terrova 80 to follow the school and spot lock over the top of them again.
The stable weather conditions had the surface temp in the mid to low 70’s and the bluegills were hungry and feeding aggressively. Often the baits wouldn’t even finish sinking before we detected a bite. The vast majority of landed fish had the Tungsten Toad down their throats. The action remained steady until mid day, and then picked up again later in the afternoon.
The surprise of the day were a few bonus smallmouth of considerable size. The largest of which was 19 3/4″ and a staggering 5 lbs, 2oz (it was so fat!). It hit the worm tipped Tungten Toad while fishing for ‘gills. Landing the fish on my ultralight spinning setup was a blast. It took several minutes of drag pulling, heart pounding action to land the beast. It’s my largest smallmouth to date. I dropped it off at the taxidermist yesterday. We released the other bass we caught and the majority of panfish. We kept a 1 man limit of eater sized bluegills, perch, and rock bass to cook up for dinner.
With the weather forecast remaining stable I expect the strong panfish bite to continue. Tight lines everyone!
*I’ve had several people ask me what I’m wearing on my head. It’s one of these: http://amzn.to/2w1f5cx Very comfortable. Very good sun protection, and they help keep your head cool all day long.
