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."
| The fishing Was Great In 2008 |
| Posted by Mike Mladenik (bigsmallmouth) on Apr 05 2009 at 8:59 AM |
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After a normal Northwood’s winter, the ice was in no hurry to leave in the spring of 2008. When the ice did leave the
However, by the last week of April spring finally arrived, the water temperature climbed into the mid forties and walleyes were on the move. The river was high and walleyes were schooled up heavily as they spawned below the dams and in small creeks. During high water conditions, peak walleye spawning occurs tight to the shorelines in current breaks making fishing from a boat difficult. Casting a jig and minnow or a shallow running crankbait while walking the bank was the ticket for catching walleye. My clients caught lots of walleyes in the 15-20 inch class and a few around 24 inches.
The walleye action continued to be productive in early May, but after spawning was completed we caught more walleyes while fishing in a boat. After spawning, walleye began to migrate downstream from the dam and creeks and stacked up in holes. These holes were not far from the spawning areas, and due to current, these holes were the perfect resting area. We anchored upstream from the hole and let out enough anchor rope to position the boat over the hole. Vertical jigging 1/4 ounce and 3/8 ounce orange and chartreuse jigs proved deadly. We tipped the jigs with either shiner minnows or Berkley Gulp Minnows.
With the water temperature only in the upper forties, smallmouth action was slow the first week of May. By the second week of May the water climbed over 50 degrees and smallmouth started to move. The current remained swift in the
The pattern was easy, put the trolling motor on high and slowly cruise the shoreline casting a crankbait as tight to the shoreline as possible. We found pockets of 8-10 fish that were very aggressive. Most of the smallmouth we caught averaged between 17 and 19 inches.Yo-Zuri F707 and F18 Hardcore Crankbaits caught most of the smallmouth; the top colors were crawfish and painted shad. With the magnetic transfer system, Hardcore crankbaits are easy to cast even in high winds and the combination of the erratic wobble and rattle makes them irresistible.
When fishing crankbaits it is important that you use the proper equipment. Lamiglas has two new crankbait rods, the XCC 724 and the XCC 725 which are ideal for fishing crankbaits under any condition. Too much line stretch in your line will hamper your hookset. While some anglers prefer braided line, I prefer Yo-Zuri Hybrid line which is a blend of fluorocarbon and nylon. Hybrid line will sink and allow a crankbait to dive quickly to the desired depth. Braided line has no stretch but it floats and hampers the action of the crankbait.
One day last May I was fishing with a client and we were using crankbaits. My reel was spooled with Yo-Zuri Hybrid and his reel was spooled with braid. We both were throwing the same crankbait, but I was catching four fish to his one, and he was fishing in the front of the boat. After a short discussion we came to the conclusion it had to be the line. I assured him that my crankbait was getting to the bottom quicker and it was in the strike zone longer. Reluctantly he spooled his reel with some of my Yo-Zuri Hybrid and his catch numbers increased.
We used crankbaits to locate smallmouth and pick off the active fish. Next, we switched to suspending jerkbaits and continued to connect with quality smallmouth. The pattern was to cast a Yo-Zuri Jerko or Yo-Zuri Hardcore Jerkbait tight to the shoreline. In cold water it is important to fish jerkbaits in as little current as possible. The slack current will allow you to let the jerkbait sink, fishing it as slowly as possible. By working the jerkbait slowly, you will catch more and bigger smallmouth. Color did not seem to be a factor since the smallmouth were attracted more to the action of the jerkbait.
Crankbaits continued to produce smallmouth through the entire pre spawn period but once the water temperature climbed to 55 degrees plastics caught more smallmouth. At that time smallmouth were predictable as they related to their typical pre-spawn locations. The countless rock outcroppings and islands on the
We caught a few smallmouth while working the shorelines with tubes, but 80 percent of the smallmouth were caught with a wacky worm. This is one bait that continues to catch smallmouth. It is one presentation that smallmouth never seem to get tired of seeing. A 1/0 red Kahle hook, hooked in the center a four inch jerkbait, falls so slow that it triggers a strike for a smallmouth regardless of its mood. The quivering action of the sinking jerkbait often out-fished live bait.
Speaking of out-fishing live bait, for years my bait of choice, as well as that of most other anglers for early season smallmouth on High Falls Flowage, was a leech. In 2008 the controversial “no live bait” regulation for bass was enacted in the northern bass zone. The regulation stated that anglers could continue to fish for smallmouth during the early season but no live bait was allowed and anglers had to use barbless hooks. Personally, I think it is a senseless regulation, but I also play by the rules. Thankfully, those
The smallmouth fishing on
By the third week of June, summer smallmouth action was in full swing on the
Throughout the summer the smallmouth action was consistent on the river. Summer might not be trophy time but it is time for action. One three day stretch in July we boated 275 quality smallmouth. This is incredible smallmouth action in anyone’s book. This is proof again that there is no need to go anywhere but the
The weather this past summer was cooler than normal which contributed to the moderate topwater bite. Sure, we caught our share of smallmouth on top, but the bite was inconsistent. We would catch a few and then the action would cease. With the Wacky Worm and tubes producing smallmouth daily, fishing topwater seemed like a waste of time. However, most of my clients were able to catch a few on top if they desired.
By Labor Day we started to see a higher percentage of larger smallmouths. Instead of a few 18 -19 inchers we were catching several hawgs each day. Water levels were low and the current was minimal. These conditions made shoreline fishing a waste of time as the larger smallmouth were holding tight to the bottom. Fishing this deep wood and rock structure with plastics, which is a typical early fall pattern did the trick. However, if you retrieved the bait too quickly you did not catch many smallmouths. A few well placed crankbaits also caught quality smallmouth.
By the third week in September the fall bite intensified as minnows became the primary forage. Crankbaits were great for locating smallmouth, but once they were found, red tail chubs became the bait of choice. We fished the red tail chubs on a 1/0 red Kahle hook with a small split shot clinched up about one foot from the hook.
October on the river was excellent with lots of 20 inch plus fish. Even on days when the weather was uncooperative we still scored with big smallmouth. High winds and cold %20(2).jpg)
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fronts which can devastate fishing on lakes, has only a minimal effect on the river. One thing is for certain, if you fish a red tail chub in a deep hole you can catch big smallmouth regardless of the weather.
Musky fishing on
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