The fishing? Not so much.
Lake Holcombe is a fickle beast, in kind terms. I love the lake. It is absolutely gorgeous, very scenic, and it feels great to really open up all four cylinders on Pop's eighteen footer and zip up and down the ~4000 acre flowage. However, the fishing can often times be incredibly frustrating.
This recipe has multiple factors to it. One, there is significant leisure and sport traffic for most of the summer. This makes fish extra wary during the day. Moreover, the lake sees a high amount of fishing pressure year round, making fish even more skittish than normal. All of this combines to make Lake Holcombe an incredible challenge when it comes to catching consistent fish. But what am I here for, if not a challenge?
The predominate lake species are Walleye, Musky, and Pike. There are bass present in some of the backwaters, but make no mistake, this is not a lake to head for if you're looking to rip some lips. The way the spring has been going for me, I figured I was bound to hook into some pike. So that was going to be my primary focus.
The first day, Thursday, May 21, we arrived at the campground and the family and I set up the camper. Beautiful campground, if anybody is wondering. That evening we headed out for a sunken island in the main straightaway of the lake. We worked the sunken island for about an hour and a half, working crawler harnesses and small crankbaits over it as we trolled back and forth. Lake Holcombe is one of the select inland waters you can troll on in Wisconsin. The fishing wasn't particularly productive, but we did manage to hook into three eater-sized walleye. All three smashed the harnesses from below, making hookups almost trivial.
Fish Count: 3 walleye
The next day we worked back bays and eddies for whatever was looking to smash some stick baits. I hooked into a handful of rock bass, each measuring around 10". The most remarkable catch of the morning was a ~12" rock bass hitting my 2 3/4" Daredevle red and white spoon. A lunch and relaxation period back at the camp was followed by an evening on Cranberry Lake, an offshoot of Lake Holcombe that can be accessed underneath a bridge. This got us away from the main hustle and bustle of the lake.
We fished Cranberry for 3 or 4 hours in the late afternoon and evening. A Texas-rigged Senko pitched in some flooded timber yielded a smaller ~13" largemouth bass for Pops. I was sticking to my Rapala X-Raps. I felt like they were my confidence bait for the weekend, and I was eventually rewarded. A few other hookups with bass and a few very large black crappies kept our attention glued to the water until just before dark, when we motored back on the flowage and headed in to the campsite for the night.
Fish Count: 3 walleye, 2 rock bass, 3 largemouth bass
The next day, Saturday, I decided to set my sights on the north end of the lake. We filled up the tanks in the 18-footer and headed north up the flowage, reaching a few long spindly back bays with shorelines of rock and fallen timber. This looked like Pike central, and I decided to fish accordingly. I rigged up a gold-colored X-Rap on my Medium-Light spinning tackle, because I was feeling a little risky. Sure enough, after about 10 minutes of working the bay's shoreline, I hit success. I casted into some growing submergent vegetation. The water was near gin clear in this bay, and I saw a flash of shimmer as my X-rap got caught on some early-growth lily pad stalks. I yanked to pull it free from the early growth, and in an instant a black log shot in from a peripheral and inhaled my lure. My heart rate shot from 6 to midnight, and I worked delicately to corral this beautiful pike with my tackle. There was no horsing to be done here, I had to really work this fish if I wanted to land it.
A two minute fight finished with me holding a 28", 7 pound beauty of a pike. It was slightly overcast at the time, around 11 in the morning, with almost no wind.
The rest of the day we fished back bays, and we all continued to hook into hammer handle pike. None neared the size of my first of the day, but they were all fun to work into the boat. The lures that worked best on the pike that day were Rapala X-Raps in sizes 08 and 10, silver-blue and gold. Also, Daredevle spoons, the red-and-white and black-and-white varieties hooked us into some aggressive pike.
Final Fish Count: 3 walleye, 2 rock bass, 3 largemouth bass, 6 pike
After a fun few days of fishing, the weekend wrapped to a close and we had to get headed back to reality. The flowage proved tough, once again, but its resistance eased slightly, as we began to understand it's nuances more over time. As always, persistence and confidence are key when working a new body of water.
Tight Lines!
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