For Marshfield (OnFocus) by Scott Hopperdietzel – Thankful Outdoors: Outdoor Journal Week of July 26th through August 2nd
July 31st – Turtle Flambeau Flowage unique camping experience
The outings this week were low activity until the weekend, I took a half-day off work Friday, and the boys and I headed to one of our favorite lakes that have given us many memories over the years. The three day weekend did not disappoint us with fishing opportunities. The weather was terrific and it just felt great to get lost in the outdoors. You can forget about a lot of things going on in the world when you reach a spot in life with limited to no cell phone coverage, you take your watch off and don’t care about time.
The Flowage is truly a water wonderland; the 19,000-acre body of water offers countless opportunities for outdoor adventure. The Turtle Flambeau Flowage is a natural choice for outdoor living, with accommodations for a “roughing it” experience.
If you have never been on this body of water and want to experience a unique camping experience, you will want to do some planning ahead of time. The Turtle Flambeau Flowage has a helpful website to get you started. Click here to start planning your adventure. There is a lot of information available on this site to help with your planning.
The key is to start to look at the map so that you can reference and locate the island or mainland campsites, as all sites are only accessible by water.
Multiple ways to get a map:
- Download a .pdf here
- Click here to request a copy be mailed to you
- Obtain a copy of the map at the multiple boat landings
I started to take the boys camping here based on a suggestion that my Dad made to me about 8 or 9 years ago. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started to plan that first trip over the years. We have improved our gear and realized the importance of waterproofing your gear.
This body of water has given up many different fish species for us, that include, musky, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, rock bass, crappie, bluegills, perch, northern, and walleye. We keep our fishing tackle on the low-tech side of things. Our go-to approach is using a Slow-Fall Weedless jig tipped with a half crawler or a minnow. You can purchase these jig heads online, or I prefer to stop in Phillips at Ross’s Sport Shop & Guide Service to pick up a few packages.
I would recommend that you always have a few Rapala along to work rocky areas for smallmouth bass, and you could hook up with a musky as Jared did several years ago. That was an exciting moment in the boat when he boated his first ever musky.
Bass style spinnerbait will always produce northern and bass as you work them in the flooded wooded bay scattered throughout the area.
On our most recent outing, we kept it simple and only used the weedless jigs tipped with a half crawler, or sometimes we used my custom made twister tails. The plastics come in handy when you tire of the little fish robbing your bait from you.
Bryce picked up the nickname of “Perch Master” in our boat, and he didn’t disappoint on this trip. He boated a real thick perch that was 12 inches long. We decided to take that perch into our local taxidermy shop, Heads or Tails Taxidermy, to get a beautiful mount done. We have so many photo memories from over the years that we figured it would be neat to get a memory that can go on the wall.
If you are looking for an adventure that is challenging but yet provides some great memories, feel free to contact me with any questions. I will be glad to give tips or suggestions about how to set up your outing. You can reach out to me by email.
In closing, I hope you find a way to get into the outdoors, create your adventure and memories, but most importantly, find a way to “Celebrate the Experience.” Go check out www.thankfuloutdoors.com for more content and share your “Celebrate the Experience” moment with us!
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Author: News Desk
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