This weekend was great to share a fishing trip with my brother Al up in Alexandria/St Cloud this weekend. We fished with Guide Joe Scegura from http://www.jsguideservice.com/fishing/ With busy schedules we do not get a lot of time to spend together. We headed out on Saturday morning anticipating what would happen. The weather was not totally cooperating so we were a little worried that the bite was going to be slow.
We met Joe at the lake around 2pm on Saturday. Shortly after meeting and greeting us at the landing we were off. We hit several spots and marked a lot of fish, but they were biting short on our jigs/minnow presentation. We tried live bait rigging and trolling cranks, but were not getting any takers.
Joe decided that the lake we were on was not going to produce so we jumped ship and headed out to another lake. This was fortunately the right decision. We got set up and in place by 6pm with an hour of daylight left. We also hit 2 or 3 spots and tried jigging and finally did get a few walleye to bite. We had one keeper in the boat with a few smalls that were tossed back to grow up for next time.
As darkness came upon us, we decided to switch tactics and start trolling cranks at night. As soon as we got onto our 1st spot we started to get hit. We were concentrating our efforts on weed edges and humps with access to deep water. We were using trolling rods with power pro and line counters so we could precisely be in the targeted zone. Also the cranks we were using helped put all of our fish in the boat. Lindy Shadling’s in Alewife, Natural Perch, and Yellow Perch #5’s were the ticket to our success. We rarely went a pass without a fish. Most trolling passes produced several fish with an occasional double. All in all we boated over 20 walleye and got a limit of nice eaters.
Before heading back to the hotel for the night we talked about our game plan for the morning. Knowing that the weather was not ideal and the barometer was still on the rise, we felt that the walleye bite was not the best choice for the morning. Not to say that we would not have caught fish, but it would have been more challenging for sure to put #’s and or big girls in the boat. So we decided to head down south to St Cloud and go on the Mississippi river to do some small mouth fishing.
This turned out to be a great decision. We started out on the river about 8:30am. The sun was starting to warm up with a few clouds in the sky and the smell of wet leaves in the air on the river is something every angler should experience in the fall. We got to the 1st spot and started to fish. Our method was live bait rigging which is something I have never done on the river for small mouth. I dropped my line in the water and within 5 minutes I had my 1st bite. Not knowing what to do completely I tried to play the fish like a walleye and gave it line like you would in a lake. This was sort of the right thing to do, but not completely. I gave the fish “too” much line and let the sinker drop to the bottom, which was my mistake. This allowed the current to pick up my line and let the sinker o to the bottom where there were a lot of rocks. This gave the fish the chance to feel my presentation and as you guessed it knew something was up and dropped my bait.
This is where I think Joe is superior as a guide. He immediately recognized what I did wrong and tried to help. He showed me what I did and what I should try next time so that it did not happen again. What I should have done is to feed line to the fish slowly, but still keep a little tension on the line as to not let slack out. This provides 2 great things to the angler. #1 – You can feel the fish and get instant feedback as to what the fish is doing, and #2 you do not let the river current take your slack and allow the fish to feel our line and or get hung up on the bottom. The great thing about this technique is that you can apply it to all different types of fishing. It definitely helped me and now knowing this my hookup percentage drastically went up.
We hit a lot of places on the river and at most spots caught anywhere from 3-8 fish and had 5 doubles for the day. All in all we ended up catching over 40 small mouth with 4-5 between 18 ½ to 20 inches. We also caught a bonus walleye, 2 northern, and had a nice musky come to the boat before snapping off my brother’s line. We definitely had a great time.
Thanks a lot Joe for another great trip. 
Thank you for the great comradery in your boat and putting us on fish even though the walleye bite was tough. Also, great call on switching it up as well, I love those big smallies! They sure put up a good fight.
