Wisconsin Fishing Guide Mike Mladenik
Guiding Marinette, Oconto and Florence Counties in Northeast Wisconsin
for Smallmouth Bass, Musky and Largemouth Bass
Recognized as one of the top smallmouth bass experts in North America,
Mike is eager to share his knowledge with his clients. Besides having over
30 years of guiding experience, Mike also writes for many regional and national
publications where he also helps people catch more fish.
Fishing Articles
Menominee River Splash
Bounty makes it an angler’s paradise
July 26, 2008
Paul Smith
Milwaukee Journal Sentinal Outdoors Editor
Crivitz - The mid-morning sun is playing "now you see me, now you don't" as puffy clouds race across the Marinette County sky. One minute the Menominee River is cloaked in shade, obscuring its subsurface features. The next, as if condensation were cleared from eyeglasses, bright light penetrates the tea-colored water, revealing the river's mysteries.
Here a cluster of boulders, there a log, long and straight as a telephone pole. Upstream lies a rock bar, downstream a sandy flat peppered with clam shells.
The sun takes another temporary leave. But another secret emerges from the darkened depths just the same.
"Whoa," says Mike Mladenik of Crivitz. "We might use the net on this one."
The gift of sight is not required to know a fish is at the end of Mladenik's line. The fish leaps and splashes and peels drag from his reel.
When I grab the net and finally turn toward Mladenik, a smallmouth bass is turning its broad flank to the current some 10 feet off the bow.
"Stalemate," says Mladenik, admiring the fish's spirit and strength.
The fish eventually tires after a series of runs and I slide the net under a handsome 17-inch smallie. Mladenik plucks the hook from the roof of its mouth and turns it back to the river.
"What do you say, drift that stretch again?" says Mladenik. OK, twist my arm.
I've joined Mladenik for a day of fishing on a stretch of the Menominee known as Grand Rapids Flowage. This 22-mile piece, between the Grand Rapids Dam and the White Rapids Dam, typifies this 118-mile river that forms the northeastern border between Wisconsin and Michigan - top-notch fishing and scenery.
Mladenik, 53, grew up outside of Chicago and moved to Crivitz to work as a carpenter. When he started working more with rods and boats than hammers and saws, he switched vocations. He has been guiding on the Menominee for the last 28 years.
"This is world-class smallmouth fishing," says Mladenik, noting he has clients from as far as Texas and California. "Why? Because none of them have fishing like this."
He now fishes about 160 days a year, most of it on rivers within 50 miles of Crivitz. The smallmouth action is particularly good June through October, says Mladenik, with the biggest fish often coming in the fall.
The Menominee has been a hardworking river for much of the last two centuries. There was a time when the area's white pine and hemlock were cut and floated to Green Bay, heavily scarring the banks and denuding the landscape. Later the river was dammed for hydroelectric power.
The banks have healed naturally over time and many stretches of the flowages between dams have taken on the character of a free-flowing, wilderness river. More than half of Grand Rapids Flowage features undeveloped shores, studded with white pine and spiced with white birch.
Smallmouth are present in extraordinary number and size in the Menominee River system. A 2001 Department of Natural Resources survey of the Upper Scott Flowage on the Menoninee found 6-year-old smallmouth averaged 17 inches in length, fully 2 inches longer than the state average for smallies of the same age.
"There is an excellent forage base and good spawning habitat in the river," said Mike Donofrio, DNR fisheries supervisor based in Peshtigo. "It's a great, natural fishery that keeps producing."
The Menominee isn't unique in northeastern Wisconsin - Donofrio says the Peshtigo and Oconto rivers also offer great smallmouth fishing.
Surveys in all three rivers routinely turn up smallmouth over 20 inches - heavy, football shaped-fish that are typically at least 10 years old. Donofrio related a story of a scuba diver in the Menominee hand-feeding crayfish to opportunistic smallmouth.
That event may speak to the density, aggression and / or curiosity of smallmouth. It certainly points out a preferred food source.
"Anything that looks or acts like a crayfish gets hammered here," says Mladenik.
At times it's difficult to concentrate on the fishing. The air is scented with pine and the water winds around uninhabited islands. The area is rich with wildlife. In the first half-hour on the water, a family of common loons, two adults and a brown-headed adolescent, fishes near us and a bald eagle flaps overhead. Later a 5-foot sturgeon leaps from the water near our boat.
White-tailed deer and black bear are common in the area. Mladenik once encountered a bruin swimming across the Menominee.
The river offers a precious "Up North" quality that complements the fishing.
Mladenik repositions the boat upstream for another drift. A stout northeast wind funnels down the river, riffling the surface and buffeting the boat. Mladenik uses the bow-mount trolling motor to control the boat's drift, keeping us about 50 feet from shore.
"So much for the weatherman," says Mladenik, noting a southwest wind was predicted.
River fishing is more affected by water flows than weather, says Mladenik, so the missed forecast is of little concern. Once summer sets in and dam discharges are held fairly constant, the fishing action is dependably good. Or better.
"You can have a cold front blow through and shut down fishing on lakes, but you'll still have great fishing on the river," says Mladenik. "And there's no need to get here at the crack of dawn. I've caught some of the best fish at noon."
Mladenik and I hit the water about 9 a.m. The action starts in the first minutes, with smallmouth from 10 to 18 inches providing steady action.
We use a simple, extremely effective presentation to catch all but one of the fish: 4-inch, wacky-rigged plastic worms. This technique has gained recognition in the last decade and is now widely used by bass anglers across the country - the artificial worm is hooked in the middle, rather at one end.
A wide variety of worms is commercially available with features geared to wacky rigging. Some are impregnated with salt, which helps control the lure's density and sink rate. Others have a garlic scent. Still others have metallic flakes. And the color variety is endless.
We cast the lures out and watched our line as the bait drifted down in the water column. Most hits occurred on the initial drop.
Mladenik says some logs never made it to the mill and now sit at the river bottom, providing habitat for smallmouth and other fish. We catch fish on timber, over rocks, near grass beds and in water that has no structure at all.
In a leisurely morning and early afternoon of fishing, we catch and release 35 smallmouth, the biggest a 4-pound, 19-inch fish. We see only two other fishing boats.
After five hours, Mladenik motors back to the landing.
"In this river you get a hit and you don't know if it's 8 or 18 inches," said Mladenik. "But you always know you're going to catch fish."
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