DWR Wiper Info 2024

[TubeDude]

Thanks Pat and Chris for the great info, wipers 
In my opinion are the best funnest sport fish in the state and look forward to catching them in the numbers we did a decade ago. I did not start fishing Willard until 2013 so I have never experienced the wide open boils and really look forward to that.

By this fall we should have some "footlongs" showing up in boils.  But next year it is going to be gangbusters...with the current crop in the upper "teen-incher" range.  and the year after they will be "twenty somethings".  Of course the numbers will decline through angler harvest and natural attrition.  But if DWR keeps kicking up the numbers we can anticipate good things.  

I'm sure you have heard plenty of wild tales about those boils of old.  But no matter how wild and wooly they may sound, most of them are true.  It was one of those "moments in time"...for a few short years...when almost anybody could catch lots of wipers.  But it also brought out the worst in some doofus tanglers.  

One of my most hilarious moments from the past happened when I was pitching small jigs for crappies in the NE corner...where those fish were also once a lot more prevalent.  It was in the spring and a bunch of carp were rolling and thrashing over some underwater humps near me.  A couple of dimbulbs in a boat thought I had a school of boiling wipers all to myself and they decided to "help me out".  They came roaring almost right over top of my float tube and began whipping the water to a froth.  I said nothing and then they noticed that the "boiling wipers" had a strange golden tinge.  I heard them mumbling something to each other and they rocketed back out as fast as they had arrived...without catching either a wiper or a carp.  

On a more positive note, my wife and I would often launch our float tubes in the north marina.  And instead of heading out to the wide open lake, we would kick back toward the far east end of the marina.  Almost every morning there would be wipers working all along that shoreline...chasing schools of shad to the surface and then mopping up on them.  We would be all along in the marina, hooking wipers almost every cast...while the guys in boats were running all over the lake and burning lots of fuel looking for those crazy fish.  

Seriously, we had days when we each caught 20 - 30 wipers before noon.  And when the wiper schools moved in around us we had fish bumping off our legs underwater.  And simply lowering a small 3" pearl plastic shad off the end of the rod tip usually resulted in a reel-screaming bendo.  I like to fish tandem rigs...with two jigs...but we couldn't use two jigs then or we got doubles.  And even with 10 pound line, two wipers pulling against each other would usually result in losing one or both fish to breakoffs.  Yeah.  It really happened like that.  Here's a couple of pics.