Contact: Dick Smith’s Live Bait & Tackle, (262) 646-2218. BIRON FLOWAGE & LAKE DuBAY
Would you rather be in one of three boats casting for a dozen muskies, or in one of 50 boats throwing for 100 different muskies? These flowages on the Wisconsin River provide both scenarios.

My favorite muskie water in our entire state has the common thread of our namesake river running through it. If you have never fished the Wisconsin River below the Grandfather Dam, the King Dam below Lake Alice, or between Merrill and Brokaw, put these trips on your “to-do” list in 2007.

Waters of Lake DuBay are a stump-strewn minefield. For those who take the time to negotiate between them and can accept the certainty of at least one butchered prop as collateral damage, this flowage near Stevens Point has tremendous muskie potential.

Phil Schweik knows these waters better than anybody. Although there is considerable comfort fishing out of his boat, I pondered whether my Type-V Stearns automatic inflatable PFD would work as Schweik “rabbited” his way across this stained water at bullet speed. Coming down off plane and deploying the electric is always welcome. But don’t let your guard down for a single cast, because you won’t see these fish coming in the stained water, so most strikes are without warning.

The Biron Flowage around Wisconsin Rapids is a little easier to negotiate. You may even be lulled into a sense of being able to run willy-nilly without consequences. But right in the middle of all this tranquility is a boulder jutting up from the depths called “Lower Unit Rock” by locals like guide Dave Lutz.

Biron is virtually an unknown flowage in the Wisconsin River system. Boat launches aren’t very well marked. You can probe most of the promising water here in just a few hours. It all boils down to a question: How many 40-inch muskie strikes does it take to make your day?

Contact: Wisconsin Rapids Chamber of Commerce, 1-800-554-4484, or VisitWIRapids.com.

GREEN BAY
Great Lakes-strain spotted muskies are at the other end of the spectrum from Ol’ Snaggletooth dwelling under the dock on Piney Point on some unknown northwoods lake. There is so much water for these Green Bay muskies to swim in that a 50-incher may not see 10,000 casts in several lifetimes -- at least at first glance.

Because of the vastness of Green Bay, there is an extremely low density per surface acre for these fish throughout most of the fishing year. But early in the spring and very late in the fall, the odds of hooking up are good for persistent anglers. The DNR reports “good numbers of 45- to 50-inch fish in the system.”

For years now, the DNR has been dumping large fingerlings into Lake Michigan near the Menominee River to the north and Fox River to the south. Although these fish go prodigal and cruise the big water as they grow, DNR surveys indicate a definite return to tributaries at both ends of the open-water year. This is driven by the pursuit of food and comfortable habitat parameters.