Minocqua Area Fishing Report

Late ice is upon us and some of the best pan fishing of the year is to be had. Fishing has really been picking up this past week with good catches being reported area wide. Time of day is the key, early morning and evening bites have been the most successful, while mid-day bites have been slow.

Crappies: Very Good – While Crappies aren’t showing up in the shallows yet to do their spring migration, anglers are having a lot of success as of late. 18-24’ mud flats seem to be the location where people are having the most success. This could change in the next few days though as warmer weather pushes in. Tip-downs with rosies or small fatheads have had anglers running around catching fish. Jigging has been very productive too, small jigging spoons tipped with a minnow head or waxies will do the trick. Numerous reports of good size Crappies to 12-13” and even had one report of a 16½” fish.

Yellow Perch: Good – A few more Perch are showing up in peoples’ buckets, still fishing isn’t on fire yet for this species. Deep mud 18-28’ of water, red spikes, wigglers and minnows are all catching fish. K-Rips, Z-Vibe and small Jigging Raps are also catching the more aggressive fish.

Bluegills: Very Good - Unlike the Crappie, the Gills are in shallow. We’ve heard as shallow as 4 feet but try working the 4-8’ weeds. Tungsten jigs with dark colored plastics or a tungsten jig tipped with a waxie has been productive.

Warmer weather for the next week will start to deteriorate ice conditions slightly. As of now, ice is holding up well (about 14-20”) with little to no snow. Saturday morning temps dropped to low single digits and froze up all that rain we had earlier in the week that was sitting on top of the ice.