Minocqua Area Fishing Report

7/3/2018

Settling in on our summer patterns! To start July, water temps in the low 70’s to 80’s, with mid-day air temps in the 80’s, have put the best fishing early and late.

High pressure, hot weather, and lots of boat traffic kept some lakes off for anglers. Moving away from the full moon should help daytime anglers.

Largemouth Bass: Very Good. Spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, and swimbaits over and through cabbage of 6-10’. Evening top water hot on plastic frogs, jitterbugs, and whopper ploppers. During the day, neko, ned, and wacky style worm fishing producing bulk of catches.

Bluegill: Very Good. Anglers using small leeches, worms, and thunderbugs reporting good catches of gills (7-9’) in 6-10’. Towards dusk use popper on a fly rod or small flys behind clear floats on ultra light spinning equipment.

Northern Pike: Good. Fast moving swimbaits, spinnerbaits, and chatterbaits. Cabbage flats in 4-10’. Some nicer pike up to 39” this week, using chubs and suckers on slip-bobbers.

Smallmouth Bass: Good. Drop shotting 3” Gulp Alive minnows, Senkos, and Jackall Crosstail Shads over 22-30’ rock/gravel humps mid-day. Early a.m. work X-raps, Shadow Raps along shallow rocky slopes.

Yellow Perch: Good. Like the heat! Medium fatheads, leeches in weedy or woody locales. Work sand-grass flats using lindy rigs to find larger perch. (9-12”) using frozen softshell crayfish.

Musky: Fair. Good time for evening topwater action. Bucktails and large spinnerbaits during the day.

Crappie: Fair. A few good reports from anglers on large water over narrow leaf cabbage on tinsel jigs. In flowages over deep wood using medium fatheads.

Walleye: Fair. Best on leeches and crawlers along 12-14’ weed edges early in morning. Then again, on lighted slip-bobbers with big leeches after dusk.

Actually, all reports are starting to improve after lull of weekend. Air temps not fluctuating as much. This helps water temps stabilize.