Most of the Croix was good in…

Numbers.

For me, I ended up the day without a cat, fishing from around 4 am to 6. I didn’t have much luck with the walleyes until about 11 a.m. Boated a total of 6 with a mix of eye’s and saugers. Just one 15.5 inches. A boat (literally) right next to me brought home a 4 maybe 5 lbs eye.

I heard from other fisherman the Kinni was good…but crowded and the same with the Hudson channel. Again numbers were good…size was small.

Minnows seemed to work the best from the people I talked to…although I heard one report of three keepers out of the Kinni on Raps.

Suzuki and Sandbar stopped by…didn’t even offer me a beer! j/k
How did you guy do down south?

Anyone fish the Prescot area?

For once the weatherman was wrong, and that was a good thing!! Nice sunny day, a little on the cool side, but no snow or rain they were talking about.

We caught the typical St Croix mix of Walleye, Sauger, Whites, Smallies, Crappies and a Sheepie. Most on the smaller side. But they kept the pole bent and we had a fun day on the water. A little bit of this too

My brother and I doubled up on a point on the first pass after arriving there about 11am with what ended up being the 2 biggest Eyes of the day. A 20 and 25 incher! That was fun! “Get the net. I got a big one! No you get the net, I got a big one” could be heard barking from the boat!

Here is Todd with his catch.

And here is my runner up fish.

Also took a short Video clip of Todds fish. (This clip can be viewed in Quicktime Player.)

St Croix Opener 2004

Sorry, you will have to turn your head sideways to the right for viewing. The fish were released to swim another day.

We ended the day down on the pool 3 wingdams tossing cranks. And that’s where I’m headed off to now after fininshing my

We went out much later than we really wanted to, we were on the water by 9am, I was to tired to get up early Bluffs park was totally full and we got the last paved parking spot in prescott. We headed up by the kini, ended up with only one eye there 17+ incher, nothing else… Tried various method, nothing really worked for us. Second fish came from the prescott area, another eye 16+ inches, and that’s it, two fish on the day both legal, oh and the GF got skunked ( which wouldn’t be so funny if she didn’t try and talk smack to me all day)

People I talked to caught some, no one seemed to have really pound them, in fact we only seen one fish caught by another boat, and it was a really small eye/saug .

Hey Brian. Nice to meet you on the river. Maybe next time it will be light out and we can see each others faces! I’ll bet it was peaceful sitting out there at 3:30. WOW. You the man. If I had any idea you would drink a beer at 5:30 AM I would have offered you 2!

I think I saw Jon J by the Kinni in his red boat but got no response when I tried to flag him down. Sanbar and I ended up with 11 legals. We tried like hel for number 12 but just couldn’t get it. 11 is a great day for us. We would have been thrilled with half that many. We found a pattern early that worked and used it all day. The fish shut off a couple of times for about 2 hours. The second shutoff was more than we could stand and hence did not get the golden boat limit. Most fish around 15.5-16.5 inches. One 17 and one 18.

Those 14’s from last year appear to have grown up. Looks to be a good year for eaters. Water temp was 52 Sat and 51 Sun. I went out for a few hours this morning and got 2. Sandbar was out with coworkers and had 5 when I left. I’m sure he got more and will report here. Very few short fish. No saugers, silvers or sheep. Nothing but eye Sat. I’m out of town on business m-w and can’t wait to get back out.

See you out there.

ps-took minnows but never used a single one. No lures either.

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I think I saw Jon J by the Kinni in his red boat but got no response when I tried to flag him down.

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Sorry I missed you there Mike. With a report like that, I probably would have stopped and fished the Kinny a little harder. We made one pass up in the AM and only picked off 2 dink saugers trolling cranks. Both at the south end. I do prefer to stay out of the crowd if I can.

Nice walleyes Jon. Are you willing to reveal what they were caught on? Live bait or cranks? Just a fellow angler wanting to increase my knowledge of what works.

Eleclady

The wife and I went out Saturday, got a late start also. Went to launch at the bluffs, but was full ended up back launching at Hastings. Fished Prescott, picked up 4 2 walleye, 2 sauger,just legal sized fish, tried up by the Steamboat and south of Kini, but no fish was little cool out and the wind started coming from north, made it little cooler, but still had a lot of fun. Caught all the fish on jig and minnows.

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Nice walleyes Jon. Are you willing to reveal what they were caught on? Live bait or cranks? Just a fellow angler wanting to increase my knowledge of what works.

Eleclady

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Todd’s fish was caught on a plain old jig and minnow and mine was caught using a lindy rig and crawler. We were just dragging up a break that came up from about 27 feet and tops off at about 10-12 feet. Minnows did a better job on Sat than the crawlers. Fairly sharp break lines are pretty common on the Croix. My bow mount locator may read 10 feet, and the dash locator with the transducer on the back of the boat may be reading 25 + feet at the same time.

However, most of our fish came dragging the rigs over flat sand areas in 12-15 feet. There were a lot of fish being caught at Catfish bar, most short walleyes. We also caught some fish over on the Wisconsin shoreline south of the 94 bridge.

Just a follow up to Suzuki’s post. Three of us ended up with 6 keepers on Sunday. The day started out on fire, launched at the Bluffs at 6:00, (we were actually the first boat in line! ) started fishing by the kinni at 6:20, by 7:10 we had 4 keepers in the boat. The bite got pretty quiet after that, ended up with two more keepers and 3-4 shorts. We left the water around 3:15. Over all it was a great weekend, I am really looking forward to some warmer temps this week, the bite should continue to improve.

Sandbar

P.S. Crossin Eyes, I ended up losing 2 bucks to Suzuki on Saturday!!

BrianK – nice to meet you Saturday morning at 5:00 am. Where did you get that fancy lighted miners hat? Did you buy that from a famous bar near Somerset?

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Where did you get that fancy lighted miners hat? Did you buy that from a famous bar near Somerset?

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Ha Haaaa! Just have to wait until about 8:30 when everyone’s leaving the show….they sell them cheap! I wait inside of course

When I went through the Kinni yesterday…I was looking for a Cliner with two Yamaha’s on it…didn’t see one. Check your PM…

Briank – You should have been looking for Suzuki’s not Yamaha’s . I have a Suzuki 140 and 9.9 kicker on a black 1850 dual console fish hawk.

Back in the early 80’s, I worked for a residential masonry business that was located across from the “Lockness”. We were paid on Wednesday’s, broke and hungover on Thursday’s. The boss threatened to change our pay day to Friday if we didn’t get our “stuff” together. Some good memories… Of course I am too smart and conservative to frequent those “jiggle” joints anymore…..

I’ll check my pm…

Sandbar

Hey! I’ll go anyplace for good fishing equipment…

Now that the phone stopped ringing…I’ll send it…

PS I know what kind of motors you are running…it’s just that I can’t spell susuki….

I was out saturday morning and sunday evening, not much doing either day. Bunch of smallies trolling on saturday, no eyes. Sunday moved deaper caught a couple nice crappies and a sauger but still no eyes. What depths is everyone hittin em at?

Boz,
All the fish we caught this weekend were on cranks. The vast majority of these fish were caught in the 12-17′ range. I did here of a good jig/minnow bight, on both Saturday and Sunday. Areas that produced fish on the jig/minnow were, under the Stillwater bridge and south in the Kinni.

Here a couple fish I managed to snag while trolling the Hudson channel.

I’m from Hudson as well…went out opening morning and managed to catch only a couple small walleyes….and a sauger…I tried south of the I-94 bridge and didn’t have a whole lot of luck…

Good info Jon. Thanks for sharing. I’ve always had a preference for casting artificial’s and for trolling crank baits and done okay, but after seeing those walleyes, I think its time to expand my presentation & techniques. Should be interesting.

Eleclady

Boz, I’m surprised I missed you, thought for sure I would run into you this weekend. I got some fish trolling in 15 to 18 feet up near bayport and south of I-94. Also, some good ones early on in the day jigging a minnow. Unfortunately I had motor problems and did not make it back out sunday, boats in the shop and will be ready to go Tuesday.

We should get out this weekend,
Lindy

Lindy i spotted you off the dyke through a mess of boaters early and was gonna try and maneuver my way over to ya but it was too crowded. We tried to fish the channel but it was just too crazy. I new there was a good explanation for your truck not being at the ramp on sunday. I’ll be out there this week sometime in the evening. Still time to track some hogs down. see ya out there

I never fished in a crowd all weekend.

I think Sandbar said “two was a crowd” opening weekend…

He can’t live with me or without me.