Minocqua Area Fishing Report 7.12.10 Anglers dealt with some changes this past week. Lots of sunny, high pressure days mixed with small quick moving rain/thunderstorms. Fishing started out very good, but seemed to slow by weeks end.
Largemouth Bass: Good. Fish moving into thick, heavy cover on hot evenings, top water (plastic frogs, jitterbugs, pop-Ra's) best over cover and in pockets within thick weeds. Wacky style worms (Senkos, Dingers), chompers skirted grubs and yums, wooly bugs punched through thick weeds accounting for bass to 20".
Smallmouth Bass: Fair-good. Would respond better to more heat. Running coontail edges and sand grass flats searching for baitfish and crayfish respectively. Lipless cranks along coontail edges (countdown to within 2' of bottom) and tubes and skirted grubs in crawfish pattern over sandgrass flats. Fish scattered, so spend time searching.
Yellow Perch: Fair - good. Use frozen soft shells over sandgrass flats to entice larger perch (10 + inches). Be ready to get intercepted by SMB and Walleye. Medium leeches under slip-floats in and along weed beds of 8-10' also holding good numbers.
Crappie: Fair. Weathers instability slowed action, should return. Work tiny jigs (twister tails, freshwater shrimp and mini mite) to locate fish over weed tops. Usually in 8-12' but found nice fish in as shallow as 4-5' last week.
Bluegills: Fair. Stick with small leeches, worms. Inside weed edges best. Look to docks, boat houses, drowned wood, cribs to hold fish.
Northern Pike: Good - Fair. Week started out very good, with nice Pike to 32" taking Boonie Baits worked over weed tops of 5-8'. Action slowed, try chubs on light jigs to tempt bites.
Musky: Fair. After good week action died. Twitch baits over weed tops big rubber baits over open water.
Walleye: Fair-Poor. Bite tough on local lakes, slow presentation of leeches on slip floats along weed edges at dusk best.
Even though we still need more rain for some lakes (a lot are back to full), some summer patterns back into play and make fishing a bit more predictable... But thats Fishing...
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