Tippe I fished Wilhelm, I guess you could say almost religiously, from the time she was opened right through the late nineties. At that time my fish of choice was the Large Mouth Bass for sport with Crappie/gills and a occasional (lucky catch) Walleye for dinning.
All three fish were abundant in addition to Wilhelm's fair share of Musky, Northern, Perch and, Cats; giving the average Angler a range of good fishing.
As with any fishing, we saw good years and we would see some not so good years with quantity and quality of fish but, you would always find many boats and shore Anglers fishing Wilhelm.
I'm going to say, it was the mid nineties when I began to see a big difference with the vegetation control in Wilhelm in that "all" weeds were eliminated across the entire lake. There was always weed control to an extent however, it just seemed finding vegetation anywhere of any sort was impossible as compared to earlier years.
Bass fishing remained strong but the quantity/quality of pan fish became significantly different and the old "honey holes" began drying up with the need to find structure in deeper water if one wished to catch quality pan fish. You can usually find this area where walleye were once caught.
Structure really never existed in Wilhelm as you see with Pymie or Shenango in that Wilhelm's construction is more "bowl shaped" leaving little if any humps, ledges, drop offs, etc. At best you will find a few old road beds and maybe the old stream channels of Sandy Creek (once 1 to 2 feet deep) that snake their way through the area. Hell, I think most of the structure was produced by the "ice fisherman" and their bundles of Christmas Trees being drug out on the ice. Of course that stopped when the ice fishing slowed to a crawl, for lack of quality pan fish, and over the years those "brush piles" have all but wasted away.
I can remember, searching for "gills" by sight, looking for the "plate sized" dusted areas in the sandy areas and/or by smell. Remember those days, "gills" so plentiful in "size eatable" that you could smell them? Well don't count on that today because they ain't "gills" your smelling all over Wilhelm, and they ain't eatable fish either!! blehhhhhh
I think, last year, it was announced that more toothy critters were being stocked in Wilhelm(*1) that will help control the overpopulation of Shad. Strange, so many years I fished Lake Wilhelm and never saw schools of shad both in numbers and size. Then presto; her waters are polluted with the fish sometimes, schools so large, the smell is overwhelming but how could that be, with the stocking of sufficient "toothy critters" over the years, should not the Shad population been held in check?
I've continued fishing Wilhelm over the past ten years, more for past memories than catching fish and I can tell you, she isn't the family fun fishing lake she once was and until one day this year I have had little success fishing, like the good ole days.
But then again maybe I should fish Wilhelm for bass.
*1. Needed to put the fish from draining Tamarack somewhere.
