The Milwaukee Post

The Green Bay Packers will have their best offense in team history in the 2015 sea- son. They led the NFL in scoring last season with 486 points. It's a lock that they will score more points this season and might even match 2011, when they scored 560. Everything is perfect with the offense. Aaron Rodgers is still in his prime. The offensive line is as good as it's ever been with some reserves that are good enough to start. The wide receivers are all back, and Davante Adams has improved so much that everyone other than the equipment manag- er is talking about his development and maturity. He's so good that it's suggested that Randall Cobb's numbers might go down because Adams will earn so many more passes from Rodgers. At running back, Eddie Lacy is one of the best in the league. Tight end might be the weakest position on the offense, but it will still provide one of the biggest improvements for the offense. The Packers will be better in the red zone because Richard Rodgers will become a huge favorite of Aaron Rodgers. It's not all good. It's all great. The NFL record for points scored in a season is held by Denver with 606 in 2013. It will be mentioned many times during the upcoming season. * * * Tiger Woods is doing what no other leg- endary athlete has ever done. No superstar in any sport has ever collapsed similar to the current problems of the second greatest golfer in the history of the game. Age always destroys the best, but Woods isn't anything close to old for a golfer. He's 39. Jack Nicklaus won his final three majors after he turned 40. Tiger not only isn't con- tending for a 15th major, he's playing so poorly that it's will soon be no big deal when he can't break 80. Mike Tyson might be the only athlete with a fall was as great as Tiger's run to mediocrity, yet Tyson's life had been such a mess that it not only wasn't a shock but might have been expected. As Jack Nicklaus did with his final major at the age of 46, the great ones have often come back with one fabulous performance when it appeared that they were done. Tiger could do the same, but nothing is guaranteed because he has already gone where no "maybe the greatest ever" has ever gone. * * * The NBA Draft will be insignificant for the Bucks this season. It doesn't matter what player is taken because the Bucks are looking for veteran help and not another good young player. They've already got two possible stars in Giannis Antetokounmpoand Jabari Parker, and suc- cess in 2015-2016 will be about the Bucks adding veteran help. Since Jason Kidd coached him with the Brooklyn Nets, Brook Lopez would seem like a best bet as such vet- eran help. It's about winning a playoff series in the upcoming season, and a kid, other than the coach, won't help much to get that done. * * * Every human being in Wisconsin should be rooting for Jordan Spieth to win the British Open July 16-19 at St. Andrew. A win in that major and Spieth would be going for the first-ever modern grand slam in the his- tory of men's golf at Whistling Straits in mid-August. It would turn the PGA Championship into the most important major golf tournament ever. The biggest major tournament in the history of the modern sport would be played right here. It could be as big as the Ice Bowl. No one, other than Spieth, should want him to win the British Open Championship as much as every person in this state. And it doesn't matter if you don't know anything about golf. June 26, 2015 • Milwaukee County Post • 11 "HOMER" on SPORTS STEVE "The HOMER" TRUE (Steve "The Homer" True, host of "Homer and Thunder Show," heard from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays on 540 ESPN, can be reached at homer@espnmilwau- kee.com) Everyone in Wisconsin should be rooting for Spieth at British Open Packers' offense should be best in NFL Pewaukee Lake, by and large, is known for its incredible muskie fishing. The thing takes a licking and keeps on ticking. I mean, it gets more pressure than any other lake in the state but still keeps Esox anglers happy as a clam. But what some people don't know is that it has quietly become one of the better largemouth bass producers around southeastern Wisconsin. In fact, Wisconsin Alliance of Bass Tournament Anglers' Wounded Warriors on the Water Tournament recently had a first-place weight of 27.04 pounds — with six fish! That's almost a five-pound average that would get respect anywhere in the country. A friend of mine, Matt Bichanich of Oconomowoc, called me and said he had a jig-n-pig bite going on the lake and asked if I wanted to tap into it. We met at the launch at 5:45 a.m. and had three baits on the roster: a jig-n-pig, a tube and a Texas-rigged plastic worm. "Pewaukee is different than a lot of lakes around here in that I think bass will stay shallow all year to some degree," Bichanich said. "That means you either fish docks or doing what we are doing today: flipping." Bichanich maintains that because there are so many muskie in the lake that bass stay off the deep weedlines for most of the year. Instead, they look for thick milfoil and other weeds to sit in and ambush bait. To get at them, you need to have weights anywhere from 3/8-ounce to one-ounce vari- eties to punch through the vegeta- tion and get to the fish. "One of my favorite baits to get at them is a bass jig with a pork trailer," he said. "A Pork Frog, or Craw, is still one of my go-to baits even in the summer. Lots of people use pork early in the spring or late in the fall, but pork works all year. It just offers a different look, or action, than plastic and the fish are drawn to the scent, too." When the jig doesn't pay off, he will switch to a plastic worm or tube, but still ends up flipping them more than casting them. Ben Heussner is the fisheries biologist for Waukesha County and believes that Pewaukee is on the upswing for bass. "It does go in cycles, and Pewaukee is doing very well for bass right now," Heussner said. "Part of the reason is that the lake is very fertile and there is a ton of forage. The habitat is good, too — lots of weeds for the bass to ambush things from." In fact, the lake might have too many panfish — which led to a rule change that will restrict walleye fishing to three fish at 18 inches or more and one pike at 32 inches or more. "We're hoping that these preda- tor fish will clean up some of the panfish," Heussner said. "That could mean bigger panfish in the long run. We didn't need special restrictions on the bass, because most people release them." Bichanich was the first to hook up with a chunky bass that weighed in at just under 4 pounds. "I'll use braid out here a lot because you really have to horse them out of the weeds," he said. "If the bite is tough, I may go with a 20-pound fluorocarbon. I also flip with my left hand instead of my right, because I can get more flips in per day because I don't have to switch the rod from hand to hand after each flip." As for rods, they better be stiff and no less than 7 feet long. Most of the day we concentrated on flip- ping around pockets of heavy weeds in 3 to 8 feet of water. Turns out, after the first hour or so I was doing it wrong. While I was flipping my jig into the "holes" in the weeds, Bichanich was pitching right into the thickest parts of the weeds he could find. "I get bit more that way," he said. "I'm going for a reaction bite. I think the bass hang tight in the weeds and may face out into the pocket, but I don't really want the bass to study my bait. I want them to react to it, and I get them to do it by going right in after them. I just think they feel safe from the muskie in the thicker cover." We both caught fish, with all of them being more than two pounds and most of them being in the 2- to 4-pound range. Most were caught in thick weeds, but we did catch a few around docks. "This pattern will pretty much run all summer," Bichanich said. "It stays good, I believe, because there is just so much area to fish. This lake doesn't get a ton a bass fishing pressure, but even when it does there are so many places for the bass to hide in. They simply all can't get fished." We didn't run into any schools of fish that day, but when you do, Bichanich said you can find some serious weight. "You can be in a tournament out here and find a school and in five minutes have over 20 pounds of bass," he said. "I've seen it happen, and I've done it myself. There's some really nice smallmouth out here, too, but they can be pretty hard to catch after the spawn." (Dan Durbin writes an outdoors column for the Post. Call Durbin at 644-7940, or email him at ddurbin@bastdurbin.com if you have a story idea.) Largemouth bass fishing better at Pewaukee Lake DAN DURBIN SPORTS

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