June Full Moon Fishing Report

The full moon in June is a much-anticipated event for me and many other musky anglers every year! As the season opens the last Saturday of May here in Northern Wisconsin, it’s not uncommon to find sluggish fish that are still recovering from their spawn. Often it takes some time to see these fish really fire up, and the full moon can be just the event that sets them off!

Oddly enough, this year up here in the Northwoods, we had a particularly late spring with lots of water in our favorite rivers. This gave us unusually awesome musky conditions for opening day. With river levels and water temps being just right, things started off with a bang, and a surprising number of fish were caught opening week!  

In true musky fashion, the bite didn’t last long and we were back to working hard to find them. We had lots of follows and days where they didn’t show up at all. The full moon with a grumpy weather forecast was a glimmer of light at the end of the muck fusky tunnel!

As a guide, I get really excited for the three days surrounding the full moon event. This year, I had the same two guests in my boat for those three days, with the full moon landing smack dab in the middle.

Day one was cold and rainy, and the fish were on the move. We had a half dozen follows and two other eats that unfortunately didn’t stick long enough to get them in the net.

Day two on the official full moon is where things got interesting! There was a thick humid haze in the morning, a forecasted high of 94 degrees, and bluebird skies. Not something I typically get excited about… The morning started off quiet, but we saw a black bear on the river, deer all over the place, and a bobcat hunting on the bank. Once the major rolled in around noon, things got silly! Between 12pm and 6pm (the hottest part of the day) we had 12 fish eat flies (remember to strip set folks!), another half dozen follows, and put two fish in the net!  These are the freakin' days we all dream of!

Day three was another cold and rainy day with intermittent thunderstorms, a forecast that I would usually get excited for. Unfortunately, the fish didn’t agree, and we had one single follow from a small fish…

My take away from this adventure is to forget the forecast, and go fishing whenever you have the chance! If you would have asked me which days I would have predicted to be the best, I certainly wouldn’t have picked the hottest day of the month, but the conditions sure did align!