Plum Lake Trip 2008

Immediately when we woke up this morning, we knew that it was going to be a busy day.  The plan was for Paul and I to hit up a new lake, followed by the Rainbow Flowage with Jack (Grandpa’s fishing bud), and conclude the night back on Plum Lake.

Paul and I got up early knowing we were on limited time.  We decided to hit Laura Lake, in Vilas County.  In the book we had, it mentioned that you would need waders to launch a boat, so we brought ours along.  They were not kidding when they said this.  There was a good 50 yards of water less than 2 feet before you hit water where the boat could float on its own with people in it.  We took it all in stride, as we figured that this might relieve some of the heavy pressure that so many other lakes recieve.  We quickly were in the boat and noticed one of the downfalls that the guide had mentioned, gin clear water.  The sun was already up, so we knew the fishing could be tough.

We worked multiple bays looking for weeds that were so far behind throughout northern Wisconsin.  We finally found some structure in the southwest corner of the lake.  There were a lot of submerged branches, deep logs, and large boulders.  There was also some other debris from homes and piers.  It did not take long, before Paul hooked into a few smallmouth.  As the wind began to blow us from shore, we started to drift over some deeper water (15 + feet).  We noticed immediately we started to mark some larger schools of fish.  From what we could tell, by looking down, they had to be perch.  I quickly switched to a small perch colored swimbait with a spinner to give it a little flash.  I made a cast and knew right away that lure was wrapped up.  Being lazy, once I brought it into the boat, I tried to just swing the lure untangled around the rod tip.  I than began to splash and flutter the lure around in the water.  Than, a decent musky rose out of the depths to stare at my flailing lure.  He began to turn away as soon as I made eye contact with him.  I quickly did the “figure-8″, but he swam off anyways.  We knew we had to get back, and that we were already running late for the Rainbow Flowage, so we gave a few casts and called it an AM.

The ride home from Laura Lake was almost as exciting as the muskie follow.  Paul was driven the car, and I quickly shouted out to him “bear!”.  Sure enough it was a black bear about 50 yards from the road.  I quickly realized the camera was in the boat, so I jumped out to get a few shots.

Do not know if it is rare to see this, but it was eye opening to us.

Another shot a bit closer:

A closer look at a decent size black bear in Vilas County.

The Rainbow Flowage was next on the list.  It was a much better day for the boat containing Paul, Grandpa, and Jack than it was for David and I.  The winds were picking up strong, as a front was pushing through.  My smaller trolling motors had a real difficult time holding position and moving around.  It was also really hot out and I was agitated.  Paul’s boat did real well on a Johnson’s silver minnow w/white trailer.  Grandpa even got bit off by what he believes was a soild muskie.  He was fishing for smallmouth, so he did not have a leader.  They caught a variety of pike and smallies.  My only fish of that location was a beautiful 12 inch crappie that came on an orange x-rap.  It was tough, as most fish seemed to be holding really tight to cover.

Here’s a shot of Uncle Dave on the flowage:

My Uncle Dave overlooking the Rainbow Flowage.

We got back to the cabin late afternoon and took naps.  We woke up again early evening hoping to get out onto Plum for the evening bite.  We could only stay out for about 45 minutes before a big storm pushed through and cancelled the evening.