Kurt's Island Sport Shop

Feels like I’m constantly retracting parts of my previous reports, just like the things I tell my wife, only this is in writing (dang!). Contrary to last week’s report, there were some Hexagenia (Mayfly) hatches on some of the flowages (especially the Turtle to the north). Must have started their two-day migration before the colder weather moved in (my excuse). More mild weather, some rain (nice, what’s the Northwoods without some more mosquitos), and a forecast moving our

Beautiful week of weather, could have used some more rain, but… With the warmth, water temps climbing into mid-70’s already, pushing fish out of the late May patterns and into early summer a bit ahead of schedule. Expect bites from last week starting to shift this coming week. Smallmouth Bass: Very Good-Good – Anglers reporting fewer bedding fish than last week. Temps speeding up the spawn. Post spawn Smallies outside spawning areas hitting suspending jerks (Husky, X-Ra

A beautiful week for fishing, a couple days of east winds shy of a perfect week. Overall, fishing was good and looking forward, no reason to think it won’t remain so with steady temps in the upper 70’s to low 80’s forecasted all week. Smallmouth Bass: Excellent-Very Good – Many bedding fish, some already done due to warm temps. Top-water action hot on Chug Bugs, Tiny Torpedoes. Urchin style baits have been the rage as well as Senko’s, Neds, Yum Breakin Shad and Flukes.

The 2026 Opener is just days away, May 2nd! Area lakes and Flowages are ice free and ready to fish. The Walleye spawn is different from lake to lake. Pre-spawn and spawning Walleye will be found on the larger, deeper, colder lakes, and some spawning still on large lakes further north. For the most part we should see plenty of post-spawn activity this opener. The barely warm up, mostly highs in the mid-40’s to mid-50’s this week, will slow down the lakes warming and stret

It’s hard to tell we got hit with a blizzard last week! Three days of 50°+ and most traces of that snow are gone! Anglers still finding their way across the ice. The snow cover protected the ice from the warmth, but now that’s gone. The melting snow has been seeping into the ice. Plus side…little to no slush, the negative side…top 6-8” of the 17-23” reported getting punky. A few landings on the North sides of lakes pulling away due to melting from blacktop accesses. Onc

In case anyone needed a reminder of what winter can be like…in March! Blizzard conditions Sunday and Monday (3/15 & 3/16) completely shut fishing (and nearly all other) activity down. While we didn’t get the 30”+ like the did from Wausau east, the 12-14” on top of the 8-9” on Friday (3/13) was enough. Fishing reports from the break on Saturday (3/14) were few, but encouraging. Yellow Perch: Good-Bad (Bad being shut down) – Schools or more like small “pods” of Perch in num

Winter is arriving, so the party is over for a while. Sub-zero highs and double sub-zero lows will make almost anyone think twice before heading out on the lakes. Mid-week doesn’t look so bad, but the weekend forecast is pretty scary (Friday morning (1/23) lows to hit -23° with wind chill (-42°)). So, let’s look back at the good ol’ days (last week), temps in the 20’s and fish biting! Walleye: Very Good-Good – Still some good jigging action on Hyper Rattles, Shiver Minn

Great week weather wise for anglers as temps in the upper 20’s to mid-30’s made for comfortable fishing. Even the slush issue has started to settle down on most lakes having either gotten packed down or snow cover melted down enough to let colder nights freeze it down. Despite such good conditions, it seems ice fishing traffic has been lighter than expected (I get that Sunday (1/11) was a day of mourning here in Packer Nation). To be fair, fishing fell off some on Saturda