ID Fish on Any Flasher!

How to ID Fish on ANY Flasher (Without a Camera)

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Remembering Little Lake: Butte Des Morts

REMEMBERING LITTLE LAKE

BUTTE DES MORTS

     Most people who live in the Fox River Valley in eastern-central Wisconsin do not realize there is a lake on the Fox River between Green Bay and Lake Winnebago. It actually isn’t much of lake and no more than a widening out of the Fox River so perhaps that is why it is overlooked by many people.

     The lake is called Little Lake Butte des Morts. It is surrounded by the cities of the Fox River Valley. To the north is the city of Appleton and to the south is Neenah. Much of the lake is bordered on the east by the city of Menasha and to the west by Highway 41. It is easy to miss.

When you look at a map of the Fox River Valley you clearly see Lake Butte Des Morts just to the west of Oshkosh, up the Fox River from Lake Winnebago. But Little Lake Butte des Morts is a bit more difficult to find even on a map.

I am not sure how I heard of Little Lake Butte des Morts, but I found it when I came home on leave one winter when I was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. It was the last year of my enlistment, and I had returned to the states after my first tour in Germany. I took a short one week leave in February to return to Oshkosh. Leonard Wood was only a one day drive and we ended up driving through a blizzard in Illinois to get to Oshkosh. Looking back at it now I realize what a dumb thing it was to drive through a blizzard with my wife and two young daughters. But we had a relatively new car, a three year old Gremlin, and my wife and I were young so we didn’t recognize the risks then.

I was back in Oshkosh for a couple of days when someone told me about this little lake in Menasha. I do not know who told me about it but they assured me it had lots of perch in it. One of the things I truly missed during my two years in Germany was fresh fish. I caught trout while I was there but they didn’t have anything like perch. Actually, Europe does have a fish similar to our perch but they have a humped back and they were relatively rare to catch. On another tour to Germany I would catch a perch or two but that was it. What I really missed was catching perch or panfish and having a fish fry.

In my parent’s basement I had left a bucket of ice fishing rods, an ice scoop and my ice chisel, or pick or spud as they were called. Ice fishing was simple and a bit rustic in those days. I got out the ice fishing gear, picked up a couple dozen wax worms, and filled a thermos jig with hot coffee. I didn’t have a lot of cold weather clothing but I had my grandfather’s red insulated deer hunting pants and jacket. Red was the deer hunting color then before the orange laws went into effect. I also had a pair of cheap rubber boots with a thick felt lining. They were the warmest pair of boots I had then and they actually worked well. On top I had a pull-on wool stocking hat and a lined pair of leather mittens. For years that was my ice fishing clothes. I still have the mittens but the rest is long gone, out-grown and discarded

I was all set and one afternoon drove over to Little Lake Butte des Morts. I found a street taking me down to the edge of the lake. There was a place to park my car and a path through the snow other fishermen took to get out on the lake. There were about ten guys fishing so it seemed I found the right place. I gathered my gear and walked out on the ice. I realized it had been over two years since the last time I walked on a frozen lake.

I talked with a couple of the other fishermen and they told me to chop a couple of holes through the ice anywhere in this small bay and I should catch perch. Everyone also had a small pile of perch sitting on the ice. I chopped two holes, turned over my bucket, put wax worms on a couple of jigs and dropped them down through the ice holes. I then poured myself a cup of coffee and watched the two small bobbers floating on the water. It was incredibly simple.

The bay was shallow and there was only about six feet of water under the ice. As I looked through the ice holes I could see green weeds on the bottom. Every now and then I would lift the rods, jig it a couple times and then set it back down again. It didn’t take long, perhaps only a few minutes when one of the bobbers began to dip under the water and shaking off my mittens I grabbed the ice rod and set the hook. The light jig rod doubled over as a fish ran off. Since the water was so shallow, I only had to lift the rod up and the fish was splashing in the ice hole. The fish was a small perch like the others I saw on laying on the ice. Although I was using a very light jig stick, I was amazed at what a good fight this little perch had in him.

I baited the jig stick and dropped it down again. Slipping back on my mittens, I reached for my coffee. A moment or two later my bobber began to move again. For the next fifteen or twenty minutes a small school of perch must have come through under the ice where I was because one or both of my bobbers seemed to constantly be sinking in the ice hole. I was so busy catching fish and baiting hooks I did not have time to put my mittens back on. By the time this school moved off I had about a dozen fish lying on the ice and my hands were red and stiff from the cold.

The fishing stayed fairly consistent for the next couple of hours and I amassed a good size pile of perch on the ice. By this time I also ran out of coffee and it looked like I had enough perch for a fish fry. They might have been small but I caught enough of them to make up in numbers for what I might not have in size. I turned my bucket back over again, dumped in the perch and walked back to my car and drove home. That night we ate those perch and it might have been one of the best fish fries I ever had. The fish were breaded and cooked in lard. We used lard in those days; everyone did. There were few kitchens in those days that did not have a tub of lard in the refrigerator. It was cheap and tasted good and we were not aware of today’s health risks associated with lard or animal fats. Besides then we were young and invincible.

 ONCE A LONG TIME AGO

When you look around Little Lake Butte des Morts today it is hard to believe what it must once have looked like before the cities, streets, houses and businesses were there. A forest surrounded the lake four hundred years ago. Wild rice grew in the shallow waters bringing in rafts of ducks. The land around it was abundant with game. It was the land of the Fox Indians and then later the French explorers, trappers and traders.

 

Butte des Morts means “Hill of the Dead” and that name came after two battles between the French and the Fox Indians. In the early 1700s, a large camp of Fox Indians, estimated over eight thousand men, women and children lived in a walled town on the banks of the lake across from what today is Neenah. The Fox Indians were like pirates. They controlled the waterway, intercepting both other Indians and whites as they came through their area taking hostages and extorting furs and other items from those traveling through. This significantly harassed and interfered with the very lucrative fur trade, which in those days was not only a major financial but also political enterprise.

The French could not allow such disruption within their empire so they sent an armed group under the supervision of one of their military commanders to eliminate this band of Indian pirates. It was, as with many of these Indian battles were in those days, a no holds barred, no quarter asked or given, with death to the last enemy person. The French won both battles and the bodies of Fox Indian’s, men, women and children, were piled high and covered with dirt. These mounds became the “Hill of the Dead” and mentioned prominently in writing by exploreres and travelers through the area in the early 1800s.

 THE NEXT WINTER

Six months after I first fished Little Lake Butte des Morts my enlistment ended and I returned to Oshkosh. The plan was to go back to school at the University of Oshkosh, get a commission through their ROTC program and go back in the Army. I had the GI Bill, my wife and I both had part time jobs and between a Wisconsin Vietnam era tuition grant and the money I was making selling magazine stories, I was able to put together what I needed to pay for college tuition. We would be barely comfortable enough to get through the next two years until I could graduate and get my commission. There were some risks involved, but again it was good to be young and be willing to take the chance.

It was exciting to be going back in college again. My grades were much better than they were the first time I was in college before I joined the Army; being a bit older with a sense of purpose made me a much better student. I breezed through the fall and then the first of winter settled in. I got through the first semester and now had almost a month off for winter break. Ice covered the lakes and snow was on the ground. I wanted to go ice fishing and I remembered how good it was on Little Lake Butte des Morts. I got my ice fishing stuff again out of my parent’s basement and got one of my ROTC buddies to go perch fishing with me on Little Lake Butte des Morts.

I remember the day was gray, promising more snow but not for that afternoon. It was chilly but not real cold yet and there was a light wind. We filled thermos jigs with coffee and stopped at a bait shop for three dozen wax worms. This particular bait shop put their wax worms in empty chewing tobacco cans. A couple of weeks later my wife found the container in the refrigerator where I put it, containing the left over wax worms from the last fishing trip. She was upset, thinking I had taken up chewing tobacco. I have had enough bad habits in my life but chewing tobacco wasn’t one of them. I explained those cans were used by the bait shop to pack wax worms in and I hadn’t taken up chewing tobacco. She really didn’t like the idea of having grubs in her refrigerator any more then the thought of my chewing tobacco, but she tolerated them as long as I pushed them way to the back where she wouldn’t see them. We survived the rest of the winter with the grubs in the tobacco cans as long as they were out of sight.

With coffee and bait we were all set up and I drove back to the street in Menasha that took us down to the lake. It was early in the ice fishing season yet and ice wasn’t very thick so it didn’t take long to punch a couple of holes through ice with the water gushing up in the ice holes. Throughout the winter the ice never got anymore then about a foot thick thanks to the current from the Fox River running through the lake. We scooped out the slush, dumped our gear on the ice, turned over the buckets, baited our hooks and we were fishing.

We fished in the shallow bay again like I had a few months before. As it turned out I never fished anywhere else on Little Lake Butte des Morts. For the rest of the winter I fished that bay and caught all the fish I wanted. We poured ourselves a cup of coffee and before we finished it our little bobbers were beginning to dip, bounce and sink in our ice holes. Sitting side by side, there were times we both had fish on at the same time and there were times one of us would have a fish on both jig poles. By the time it was getting dark and night was crawling across the lake, we were out of coffee and had a big pile of perch sitting on the ice. That night my buddy and his wife had a fish fry at his house and my wife and two daughters and I were eating fresh perch fillets at our house. The ice fishing season had good a start.

For the rest of my winter break I worked, wrote a couple articles, watched my two daughters when my wife worked, went rabbit hunting a couple of times and went fishing as often as I could on Little Lake Butte des Morts. Sometime after the middle of January my second semester began. Now the only day I had available to fish was Saturdays. Every Saturday I would leave about mid-morning and fished until I had enough fish for a fish fry. Once I got back home I put the frozen pile of perch in the basement until early evening when they were thawed out enough for me to clean. I would scale and fillet the fish and on Monday evening we had a fish fry.

I did this every Saturday for the next two months and always caught enough fish for our Monday dinner. This became my routine for the winter. Not only was it my outlet and excuse to go fishing every week but it also was a fairly cheap meal every Monday. It only cost me a couple gallons of gas and grubs. There were a couple different types of grubs available at the bait shop. One was wax worms which I started fishing with and the other was mousies. I found mousies to be more durable and worked just as good as wax worms so I used them to extend the use of my bait and normally I could get two weeks out of a three dozen tobacco can. My guess was my weekly fishing trip was costing less than five dollars a week. It was both cheap entertainment as well as an inexpensive meal for a family of four.

Most of my buddies and a few family members joined me every Saturday and we never left without a meal of perch. Some days it was cold and other days warmer. Sometimes it snowed and other days the wind swirled the snow on the ice around us. I remember one morning I only had a sip or two out of my coffee cup when a school of perch came through. It seemed for the next thirty or forty minutes we were very busy. Finally when the fishing slowed down I looked at me coffee cup to see it was full of snow blown into it by the wind.

Another time I came off the ice and wasn’t feeling well. When I got home my face was flushed with fever and when I got home I laid down for a nap. The nap and a handful of aspirin didn’t do much for what was ailing me and I still had a pile of a perch to clean. My wife took pity on me and went down in the basement to help me clean fish. She scaled the fish while I filleted them. Another day I came home with a bad case of chills. I kicked off my boots and sat down in the living room still dressed in Grandpa’s old deer hunting suit and she tucked blankets around me, brought me hot tea and aspirins. It took me a couple of hours before I felt normal again.

Although the fish were small we made up for the size in numbers. I figured for my family of four we needed two dozen of the small perch to make a meal. There were days I caught what I needed in couple of hours and other times it took me four or five hours to catch a meal. I used light fiberglass jig sticks and was always amazed at what a good fight even the smaller perch put up. I had about a dozen jigs I carried in a plastic 35mm film container. There seemed only a handful of panfish jigs available in those days. I used either what was called a tear drop of rocker jig. I used only three colors; either yellow, red or orange. One of those two jigs in one of those colors always seemed to catch fish. In another film container I carried about a half dozen small ice bobbers that weren’t any bigger then a finger nail. Ice fishing in those days was delightfully simple but effective.

Finally the ice fishing season came to an end. It started to get warm as we were edging into spring. It was a warm, bright sunny day. I drove over to the small bay for my Saturday morning a fishing trip. There were a few guys already on the ice when I walked out, and I felt it moving underneath me. Taking my ice pick I jabbed it into the ice and with one blow it went through the ice and water was bubbling up. I slowly backed up until I found thicker ice. I did fish that day and caught a meal of perch but I knew as I walked off the ice a few hours later the season had come to an end.

TWO FISHING BUDDIES

Some forty years later Little Lake Butte des Morts would come back to me. A fishing buddy, Doug Hurd, and I were traveling to northern Wisconsin on a fishing trip and we were talking. Doug grew up in Beloit in southern Wisconsin and I grew up in Oshkosh. In 1972 he enlisted in the Army and went to Alaska. In 1972 I enlisted in the Army and first went to Germany and then Missouri. We did not know each other until some twenty years later we both ended up at Fort Snelling in Minnesota. I would buy my first bass boat from him when he sold it so he could buy a bigger boat. Two years later, we both retired from the Army a month apart from each other. Doug and I became friends and fishing buddies and since then have fished all over Wisconsin and Minnesota together as well as parts of North Dakota and Canada. We have become like brothers and we are part of each other’s family. He and his wife and I and my wife get together regularly to watch Packer games or to have dinner. We know each other’s children, brothers and sisters and parents. We have shared weddings and funerals within each other’s family and births of grandchildren and all the good times and occasional bad times our families have gone through over the years.

At another time our lives converged and we never knew it until we were talking on the drive north to another fishing adventure we shared. In 1975, we both completed our enlistments and both left the Army to go to school. I was living in Oshkosh and going to the college there and Doug lived in Appleton and was going to school there. He also was married but did not have any children then. On Saturdays during the winter he also went ice fishing on Little Lake Butte des Morts. It is very likely we may have fished next to each other or at least close and never knew it. We would both soon return to active duty with the Army and seventeen years later we finally met while work together in the same unit where we both retired.

Now we share a lot of fishing adventures together as well as the common bond of once being brothers in arms. Of the places Doug and I have been to and the friendship we now share, it actually was at Little Lake Butte des Morts where we might have first met and never knew it.

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Weekly Morning Trail Mix 01-29

Trail Mix 

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Weekly Morning Trail Mix 01-22

Trail Mix

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Hit and Run Perch

By: Jason Mitchell 

Schools of perch often seem to continually be on the move. When there are several mouths to feed, sitting in one location doesn’t work. A school of perch can devour everything in its path. I would hate to be a minnow or crawfish when jumbo and all of his friends roll through. Because schools of perch are typically here today and gone tomorrow because of their nomadic lifestyle, finding and getting on top of fish can be always fleeting. 

How do you land on a moving target? Sitting in a good location where fish are likely to roll through isn’t a bad strategy. If the fish are moving through and you have good traffic underneath you… why move? The other strategy is a run and gun mentality where you approach the ice much more aggressively and move when you are not on fish and move when you stop catching fish. If you are experiencing some success, cycle back through the holes until you wear out your welcome.

Finding and landing on fish is half the battle but the other factor that can enhance your success on the ice is how you capitalize on the opportunities. Perch fishing is often intense where a ten percent window can often produce ninety percent of your catch. You can go from zero to hero in a hurry. This all depends however on how quickly you can get back down into the water and how long you can keep these drifters down below.

The “turn around” is probably one of the most important factors that dictates how many fish you catch. How fast can you get the fish up into your hand and unhooked and how fast you can get back in the water. There are a few ways to increase the turn around.

Choosing lures that fall fast is one angle. Fast dropping lures include the classic Buckshot Rattle Spoon and the Northland Tackle Puppet Minnow. On a really torrid bite, using lures that can be unhooked more quickly (one hook versus treble hook) can speed up the turn around. You can also bend out the hook slightly and pinch off the barb so that the fish can pop off the hook easy. Lures like the Forage Minnow or the classic Russian Spoons. The final way to increase turnaround is to speed up the elevator ride. Stiffer rods allow you to reel in fish faster, heavier line also allows you to lift the fish out of the water and can make you more effeicient. So in a perfect world on top of a crazed school of perch, you want to throw a fast dropping lure with one hook on the heaviest line you can get away paired up on a heavier rod so that you can just windmill fish.

 

Of course we don’t live in a perfect world all the time so often, we can’t get away with maximizing the turn around on every front. Usually, we can only incorporate pieces of the basic formula above. What can often happen however is that while the overall conditions or tone of the day might require more finesse like using three pound test and a Meat Stick, when the fish finally do get wound up, you can do a lot of damage having that extra rod nearby that is rigged up for total destruction. So often, we might get the school started on the more subtle and finesse and do the real damage once we get into a rhythm where we get the school to rise up higher and start competing.

Besides being conscience of and manipulating the “turn around,” the other variable is how you can manipulate the school. Keeping fish around and staying on fish is much easier to do with a few other anglers. When you get a good school below you, get your friends in as tight to you as possible. Often, in shallow water especially…. I am not a big fan of drilling holes right next to somebody catching fish. If there are no holes close to you and you have fish stacked below, tag team the fish. When you reel up a fish, have your buddy drop down. That way there is a line in the water as you are unhooking the fish. When the bite gets intense, you can literally double the damage.

Besides keeping a line in the water, some other ways to increase your success is to pick fish off the top of the school, lift the fish higher in the water column by either fishing above the fish or using a fish on your line to pull fish up higher.

All of these variables can enable you to maximize your opportunities. In the end, you have to take what the fish will give you but the more things you can get going in your favor, the more perch you can catch. Only on the best days do all of the factors above work. Usually, you can increase your success exponentially with each facet you can incorporate.

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Bowhunting.com’s Top ATA Show Products

10 Most Buzzworthy Products of ATA 2018

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Invading the Midwest

Spin-n-Glo’s: Invading the Midwest for Walleye 

By Captain Pat Kalmerton 

When fishing the Midwest for walleye there is always a “must have” in every angler’s arsenal.  However, those “must haves” are changing ever so rapidly it is hard to keep up with what is new on the market yet actually works. Sometimes there are those hidden jewels that have been around for years that maybe couldn’t be found in your area, therefore, you would have no idea what they are or if they work. 

I am co-owner of a business, out of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, named Wolf Pack Adventures. We guide salmon fishing charters on Lake Michigan, walleye fishing charters on Lake Winnebago, as well as the Bay of Green Bay, up into the tip of Sturgeon Bay and travel all over the United States chasing the elusive walleye. When your means of survival and putting food on the table for your family depends on putting fish in the boat, we are always looking for the next “must have” lure or technique.  

A few years ago, while I was packing and doing research on Lake Winnebago for a walleye tournament, I was studying the lake maps provided on Lake-Link and reading forums. I ran across a person talking about a lure that had wings that spun at the slowest speeds and did not drop into the rocks, due to its floating body. He was crushing fish on this lure as the bottom walker was dragging through the rocks. He could run these on his extra rods while jigging rock piles.  

This intrigued me to the point that it became an obsession. I was going to find these come, “hell or high water.” The more I talked about them, the more people became intrigued as well. What in the world are these things called? I got on the Lake-Link forum and found out who was talking about them and messaged him. He sent me pictures, told me they were called Spin-n-Glo’s, but I still could not find them. That tournament was over, and then I was doing my research on the Bay of Green Bay for the next upcoming tournament and, again, here is a person talking about these Spin-n-Glo’s.  

BINGO!!! SPIN-N-GLO BY YAKIMA BAIT COMPANY! This is a company from Yakima, Washington that has been around forever. This is a lure people have been crushing fish on out west for years but it just has not come across the plains due to tight lipped secrets. LET THE SECRET BE KNOWN…. THESE THINGS WORK! Spin-n-Glo’s come in bulk bodies and then can be rigged however you wish, or can be purchased pre-rigged with the Bottom Walker or Rufus Special, a blade combo spinner with a tandem hook design, in a variety of colors and sizes. 

I ordered a bunch and started playing. To no surprise, I started catching more money fish, and here is why. When trolling any weeds or rocks, and using bladed meat rigs, you need to be trolling fast enough so that the blade creates enough tension or drag to keep from falling to the bottom and getting gunked up by weeds or hanging up on rocks. With the Spin-n-Glo I can be completely stopped, if I wish, and have no worries. This bait floats, keeping your bait up and off the bottom at all times.  Not only that, but it spins so freely. Let’s say I want to jig an area or rip cast…. this bait can be drug behind also fishing by using a Bottom Walker with desired lead, and your set.  

It runs differently though. When first trying these Spin-n-Glo’s, I used my average lead lengths and it wasn’t as productive as I would have liked. Here is why…. it floats. I shortened my lead to keep my bait in the magic striking area and caught more fish. When running lead core, shorten your lead because your Spin-n-Glo’s will ride up on you.  

 

Do yourself a favor, if you are fishing the Midwest and put some of these in your boat, or better yet, in the water….you will not be disappointed! 

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Weekly Morning Trail Mix

Trail Mix

Mallards and Pintails departing flooded soybean field – Mississippi.

To prepare for deer hunting season you need to make sure that you’re ready for a marathon on hunting.

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