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Lower Wisconsin River Float Trip

5K views 10 replies 11 participants last post by  Skifish1 
#1 ·
Finally managed to return to the Lower Wisconsin River over the weekend. Nice weather and a decent flow of around 9k cf/s measured at Muscoda. Floated 16 miles from Muscoda to Boscobel. Camped overnight on a sandbar. We use Wisconsin River Outings to provide the shuttle and canoe rental. Started the day out waking up at 4am for the 3.5hr drive.



Fishing is always pretty good on the river in my opinion. Many different species and just a very healthy ecosystem overall, small bait fish are everywhere. I pretty much only use a 1/8oz texas rigged 3.5" swimbait in a shad type pattern and catch a lot of different species. Easy to just bring one rod and I try to avoid treble hook baits as I don't want to deal with the hooks and well, I'm usually drinking the entire day.

The best spots are along any shore rock you can find. The river is nearly all sand so this is actually harder to find than one would assume. Lay downs from fallen trees, bridge pilings, and pools around islands and created by meandering sand bars round out the good spots to fish.

Ended up catching my pb pike at 34" from our campsite. The campsite was chosen as there was a lot of nice looking water to fish around it and it had a surplus of wood for the fire.



The woods in the background were split by another inflow of water



This bluff wall adjacent to our campsite had extremely deep and fast moving water. I didn't pack anything to fish it effectively unfortunately.



A smallie off the laydown in the background



I'll troll the texas rigged swimbait behind the canoe as we float downstream. In the past, it has produced much better than it did this weekend. Still got a few walleye and a smallmouth or two.



These bad boys up in the tree will wake you up at 6am. Never seen one up in a tree before



Got bit off a few times when previously it had never happened. Might consider a steel leader in the future. A lot of fish caught didn't see the camera, a sauger, many smallmouth, and a large catfish late at night my buddy caught while fishing for catfish/sturgeon - whatever would eat a worm in the deepest pool near our campsite.

Pic dump











Don't try to swing from the vines, we almost didn't make it out

 
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#6 ·
Awesome post. I've been out there twice and loved it both times, its a unique thing to do in this area of the country (were the closest dispersed camping is 4 hours away :x :cry: )
 
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