“You can never go wrong fishing the edges of floating bogs or sunken pieces of the bogs,” Pratt said. “Early season is also when you should be looking for the weeds in Chippewa flowage. If the spawn is late enough, go after the males that are still hanging around these sites, sometimes up to two weeks or longer in the post-spawn period if the water is warming up gradually.”

Skarlis recommends looking for walleyes as they return from their spawning areas.

“The walleyes are putting on the feed bag,” Skarlis said. “I look for the locations where opener walleyes concentrate as they move between their resting spots and feeding areas.”

These concentrations of fish usually have at least a few walleyes that are interested in eating. A diving crankbait or a small jig tipped with a soft-plastic trailer or a minnow will pick them out of the crowd.

Chippewa Flowage is the third largest inland lake in Wisconsin with varying conditions from one location to another. Plan to take a little time to pattern the walleyes from day to day.

For additional information, contact the DNR in Hayward at (715) 634-9658 or Hayward Bait and Tackle at (715) 634-2921.

BIG ARBOR VITAE
“Big Arbor Vitae is a ‘bread-and-butter’ lake for most of the locals and it gets fished hard all season long, but that shouldn’t steer folks away from it,” fisheries supervisor Mike Vogelsang said. “The lake is highly fertile and usually takes on an algae bloom from midsummer through fall. It’s this fertility that allows the walleye population to stay strong in spite of heavy fishing pressure. We conducted a survey on Big Arbor Vitae in 2005 and there were six fish per acre. That’s substantially higher than the average of three or four adults per acre in other northern Wisconsin waters.”

Currently there is no minimum size limit on walleyes, but only one fish over 14 inches may be kept. This keeps the smaller fish thinned out and allows for a more even size distribution. Many anglers are solidly behind this regulation since it allows eating-sized fish to be harvested while protecting some potential trophys.

Vogelsang recommends dropping a jig and minnow on rock points and bars during the first couple of weeks in May. Casting shallow-running crankbaits is another popular way of reeling in a few nice ‘eyes.

More information is available from the Northern Region DNR’s office in Woodruff at (715) 358-9239 or R&K’s Great Outdoors in Woodruff at (715) 356-6818.

TOMAHAWK LAKE
“Tomahawk has always been more of a big-fish lake and that’s certainly true now,” fisheries biologist John Kubisiak said. “The lake has the best spawning habitat on the Minocqua Chain, but it consistently has the lowest numbers of fish. In recent years, all of my cisco-dominated lakes have been having some reproduction problems.”

Ciscoes are open-water plankton feeders and they’ll eat the newly hatched walleye fry. They don’t eradicate walleyes, but they can suppress the population for a few years.

“I don’t have a good way to index cisco populations, but they seem to have pulled off a good region-wide year-class around 2000,” Kubisiak said. “But even with that problem, the estimated adult walleye population in 2004 was more than two fish per acre on Tomahawk, and with low recruitment over the last four years, the current population is probably half that number.”