When hunting or fishing new areas, I need about three years of scouting, studying and preying to learn enough to succeed consistently.
Accumulating that experience grows difficult as age and distance increases, however, which is why I increasingly hunt and fish closer to home as I near 70. The challenges increase, too, on larger lands and waters. And when you fold in factors like weather, elevation, topography, fluctuating water depths, and time of year, it’s even tougher to predict when and where fish will bite, deer move, elk roam or ducks fly.
That’s why I sometimes hire knowledgeable fishing guides like Jeff Robl (http://blog.bobberdownguideservice.com) when my wife and I fish the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage in Iron County, or Chris Weber (https://www.facebook.com/chris.weber.3139/, https://www.instagram.com/lake_cascade_guidedfishing/) when fishing Lake Cascade in west-central Idaho. Even though the Turtle-Flambeau holds good numbers of walleyes, and Lake Cascade offers world-class yellow perch, folks like me can’t expect to just show up at boat launches on either reservoir and expect to catch either species.
I suspect many anglers face the same realities, even those who own and operate the best sonar gear available. Ultimately, unless you’re proficient with that gear and spend endless hours to learn specific waters, you won’t consistently find fish and learn what they’ll bite on a given day.
Consider the tasks: Wisconsin’s Turtle-Flambeau Flowage covers 12,942 acres or 20.22 square miles. Likewise, the Lake Cascade reservoir covers 47 square miles, or 27,151.5 acres, when at capacity. When Penny and I fished it last week, the reservoir was at 58% capacity, which is 27.26 square miles or 17,446 acres.
In other words, lots of water, neither of which gets confused with 1- or 2-acre farm ponds you can patiently check with a worm, bobber and spinning rod while circling their perimeters. Instead, you study hydrological and Navionics maps on your computer; mark GPS waypoints of underwater points, humps, pinch points and channels; find and fish them; and start building your knowledge base as you fish.
In contrast, guides like Robl and Weber likely identified and checked out those sites years ago. They’ve also fished them with varied baits and lures in all seasons during varying winds and temperatures, and at every time of day. They’ve even named and numbered productive waypoints, and kept logs that document details for future reference.
Plus, guides know other guides and hardcore local anglers, many whom were experts before either guide came along, and they’ve swapped information ever since earning each other’s trust. So go it alone if you have the time and desire but realize even quick success won’t always hold up over time.
While fishing Cascade last week, for example, Weber suggested I try a couple of sites within easy reach of nearby boat landings. When I took Penny to one of them, we caught only three jumbo perch before heading ashore for a bathroom break. When we returned in late morning, we anchored over an underwater point in 11 feet of water. The action wasn’t fast, but within 90 minutes we added 10 jumbos to our catch, throwing back anything under 11 inches.
When we fished the same spot the next morning, Penny caught three jumbos and I caught none. Plus, she caught all three on a worm fished 6 inches off the bottom beneath a slip bobber. Meanwhile I didn’t catch any keepers while casting various blade baits and Ned Rig combos that Weber suggested, even though he and I had great luck with them a few days earlier, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF6YDZUNpXs, not to mention 24 hours before.
So, what changed? Did Penny and I truly find a massed school of perch a day earlier, or had the fish simply gone on a feeding binge soon after we anchored in late morning? Either way, why did those perch slam my artificial baits one day while ignoring worms and nightcrawlers, and then reverse their preferences the next morning for Penny?
I often ask Robl and Weber if they know such answers. Weber answered with his own question: “Why do perch hang out in 10 feet of water in one area, but 18 feet on the other side of the lake? Sometimes all you can do is find them and figure out what they’ll hit.”
This autumn, Weber has caught many jumbo perch on Ned Rigs, which feature a flat-topped jighead that stands up when resting on the bottom. When vertical, the jig’s 3-inch soft-plastic grub entices feeding perch to strike. Although color doesn’t seem to matter, I did best with brown or black/green plastics.
Either way, the more baits, depths and places that guides explore and decipher, the more options they have when knowledge learned one day doesn’t survive the night, week, month or year. The more time they spend fishing and documenting their successes, the better their options perform.
And when one fish species doesn’t deliver, it might be best to target a different fish, especially if you’ve tired of flogging the water that day. When walleyes stopped biting on the Turtle-Flambeau the week before we arrived in August 2023, Robl suggested we chase crappies. When we returned the same week this year, the walleyes were still
biting and Robl hadn’t yet turned to crappies.
Can fish sometimes baffle good guides? Of course. Two winters ago, Weber called several icefishing clients to warn them that Cascade’s fabled perch weren’t biting. The fish spent that winter stuffing themselves on bottom-burrowing “bloodworms,” or chironomids, the red, skinny larvae of nonbiting midge flies.
Weber said he had no choice but to level with his clients. “I told them they were welcome to come and that we’d try our hardest, but I reimbursed their down payment if they canceled,” Weber said. “I had to be upfront if I wanted to keep their future business. Luckily, bloodworm explosions don’t happen often. I’ve been through it once, and hope it never happens again.”
Whatever the results, most visiting anglers benefit from a guide. They can’t guarantee action, but you’ll have a good time trying.
Penny Durkin and her husband caught a stringer of hefty perch in late September while fishing Idaho’s Lake Cascade with guide Chris Weber. — Patrick Durkin photo