2024 fishing year in review

 

Smallmouth Bass I caught this year.

Since I am sick to death of writing about the election, I figured it was time to write about something different. Since we had Daylight Savings Time screwing up the time, I will no longer be able to fish this year for the most part. Generally I stop fishing once it's too dark during the evenings to go, though, like last year, there is a chance I will go fishing once or twice when I go on vacation in December. 

So how did this year go for fishing? Well, it depends on what part of the year you were talking about. In the Spring and early Summer I was on fire. I caught all kinds of fish, including a couple of new species, a 10 pound plus catfish, a huge sheephead (freshwater drum) along with an above average number of both largemouth and smallmouth bass. 

After that? I essentially had nothing, other than a 2nd 10 pound catfish. Later Summer and Fall were rough, even though I was fishing almost every weekend. No matter where I would go I would either catch a few small fish or end up getting nothing at all. Even when I took my vacation in September, I didn't catch much at all, even though I was fishing almost every day. 

So what was the problem? I think it was both the weather and where I went to fish. I only tried one new spot this year and though I didn't catch much impressive there, my Dad caught a 45 inch lake sturgeon. It was a great place to fish, but I never went back. Instead I focused on the  places that were close to home or otherwise convenient, even when they weren't producing. 

As for the weather it was a hot and dry summer and fall. We are having a nice rain today but we simply didn't get much rain and that meant water levels were low. And it was very hot to the point that sometimes it was just too hot to fish. In theory low water levels should make things easier to fish, but in practice that hasn't worked out for me the last couple of years. 

The two new species come with an caveat, only one of them was fair caught. The first one was a Lake Whitefish that I absolutely snagged. I was going for Walleye and I didn't get it in the mouth, so back it went. I also caught a Quillback Carpsucker, which was a fair catch, but only because I happened to snag him in the mouth, I seriously doubt he went after my blade bait. 

The one thing I didn't catch were walleye, or the closely related sauger. They just weren't around when I was fishing and I only saw a couple of them get caught in places where folks were fishing for them. You can catch walleyes from the shore, but I just wasn't having any luck at all with them at all. 

Still, it wasn't all bad. I had one day where I caught half a dozen largemouth bass and I was fairly consistently catching decent sized smallmouth bass in the 15 inch range, which isn't terrible for Wisconsin fishing from the shore. And those two catfish were pretty amazing to catch. And as bad as I did, I noticed a lot of folks fishing near me that did a lot worse, so many folks were getting skunked around me. 

It was a frustrating year for the most part. No new personal bests, no walleyes or saugers, no real good stories to tell, at least not ones I was directly involved in (my Dad will be talking about that sturgeon the rest of his life). I am hoping next year will be a lot better.

I think what I have to do most is try some new spots. There are a ton of spots in Wisconsin to fish and I gotta be willing to go to some of these places that are more than 30 minutes away from me. I had some plans to go fishing at the big dams in Central and Western Wisconsin, but I ended up not going. If I had I might have had some better stories this year.