Early season predictions from the DNR

Southeastern Wisconsin Fish Supervisor Randy Schumacher reports that more cold and rainy days are forecast before the opener, "and that's good because northern pike which will be done spawning will be active and spawning, largemouth bass will be very active still, congregating over dark organic bottoms on north side of lakes to warm themselves up for spawning. Generally they'll be in shallow waters. The best time to fish for largemouth is probably in the middle of the day. If you're going for largemouth bass, there's no point in going early in the morning unless you need to get a spot at the boat landing. Otherwise, large female bass are still feeding to help mature their eggs. As far as our recent surveys go, we caught a 51.5 inch musky in Pewaukee Lake, so we're really happy to see strong populations there. There's a good walleye population in Pewaukee as well. It's showing once again it’s a lake for everybody -- good largemouth bass, good crappie, bluegills. We're also netting on big Elkhart in Sheboygan County and found a good walleye population there as well, which was good news because we hadn't surveyed for years there and we worried the population may have gone down.”

Link to the whole report is online here.