One Man, One Lake, Many Fish
Skip Sommerfeldt, a longtime DNR fish biologist and northern Wisconsin resident, keeps a diary of all the fish he catches during the hard water season and shares his forecast for 2009-10.
Skip reeled in this 33-inch northern pike from Butternut Lake, Forest County.
Nov. 12, 2009
- I think the 2009-10 ice fishing season is going to be below average for action, but the size of the fish caught will be a little above average. It seems that we never have two good action years in a row, and after the excellent catching of the 2008-09 season, I'm predicting this year will be much slower. And I base this on some of the same factors as last year's forecast - observed forage availability and my fall fishing success.Even with the relatively late and cold spring, my fishery survey work showed that we had pretty good hatches of perch, bluegill and other forage species. This high abundance of small forage will make it much easier for game fish to feed - and less likely to be hungry when they come across an angler's bait. So the catch of small to medium size fish should be down, and action on the medium to larger fish could be normal.
The other indication has been that my fall walleye fishing has been rather slow from late-September thru early November (on Butternut Lake, where I do most of my walleye fishing). The walleye bite has been very erratic - with most of the action concentrated in the 20 minutes right before dark and the bites that I do get being less than aggressive (a lot of pick-ups and drops). And the few walleye that I have caught have been very chunky and robust fish, indicating that they're getting plenty of forage and not as likely to bite on an angler's bait. But, as the amount of small forage gets whittled down throughout the winter, look for action on fish of all sizes to pick up in late-February to March. Of course, these predictions don't even take into consideration the local weather conditions (cold, ice depths, snow amount, etc.), so action and success can change in very short order . . .
So there's my forecast - and we'll see once again how it turns out next March.
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