Minocqua Area Fishing Report - 7/19/22

Some hot weather has our Lakeland area lakes heating up, temps topping low 80’s in the afternoons. Best choices during these times are larger, cooler lakes. Certain species thrive in this heat, (air temps topping 90’s), others not so much.

Bluegill: Very Good – Try NOT to catch some off weed edges of 12-14’. Live bait meant for other species hard to keep away from schools of suspending Gills. Use leeches as your first choice followed by waxies, crappie minnows, then worms, as the Gills are ripping worms to pieces!

Smallmouth Bass: Very Good-Good – Deep weed edges with sandgrass skirts in 12-16’. Ned rigs, Wacky Worms. Very nice Smallies with reports of fish to 22 ½”. Tubes, jig and creature rigs also producing very well.

Largemouth Bass: Very Good-Good – Better tucked into weeds, try heavy cover with Sweet Beavers on heavy jigs, Senko Wacky Worms and early /late day top-water Whopper Ploppers. Good #’s and size.

Musky: Good-Very Good – Some exceptional fish this past week including a 50” river fish boated from a canoe and a 44” Tiger boated by guide Jake Smith on a Smity Jerks, had 5 in two days guiding, 4 of which were Tigers.

Crappie: Good – Tough to find, mostly deeper fish reported, but very nice fish, including a pair of 15” SLABS caught by our own Dave Peterson. Medium fatheads and Mini-Mites reporting best catches.

Yellow Perch: Fair-Good – Most Perch coming from sandgrass flats in 14-18’ of water using ½ crawlers on Lindy Rigs. Some incidental Perch located around cabbage flats on leeches while targeting Walleye.

Walleye: Fair-Good – Working full crawlers or the biggest leeches available along rock, gravel humps of 20’26’ or 14-18’ weed edges has been best. Casting #7 & #8 Shad Raps along 10-14’ cabbage edges early AM also scoring nice Eyes in the 17-22” range.

Northern Pike: Poor Don’t you know their teeth fall out in the summer and they quit biting? Digging way back for that excuse, but personally had a tough time enticing Pike this week. Not many good reports except for those using live bait, but even those were few.

Hot water temps will actually speed up metabolisms of fish, unfortunately, hot water equates to low oxygen. Be careful playing and releasing fish when temps on the surface hit into the 80’s. This can be a very stressful time for caught fish.