Last Night’s Bite

Finally made it out to the river after being absent for spending too much time on the sippi and various lakes pan fishing due to the high water on the rivers. We got on the river at 4:00pm and fished until 8:30pm. We ended up catching 15 eyes with about 4 more lost including a big one. Trolling was the ticket. If I had to pick a color it would be the fire tiger and a natural minnow color. I think we may have do e a bit better if we matched the forage as at the end of the night, one eye coughed up a size 6+ shad; we were using stick baits. Best depths were a bit mixed, but most all came in about 19 fow with the best range being the 16-23 fow. All fish we holding up on steeper breaklines.

Thanks for the report

Get any crappies? I was out Saturday night for a bit and the crappies were smashing crankbaits 16FOW and under. It was fun getting big pies trolling cranks. The Walleye bite wasnt half bad either

This might be a dumb question. If you were using stick baits in 16fow or so, were the fish coming up to the baits are were you getting down somehow? 3-way, bottom bouncer, lead core, etc.

Lead core will get your stick baits down in 30′ of water

I did get some crappies. Nothing huge, but great 11’ers which IOP is a great eater..the bigger fish get a bit soft and hold more grease. We only got three, and kept two. The nice thing was that I could mark small little schools of the crappies. I wish I would have had some other gear with and gone vertical for them.
I was fishing using 3-way rigs. I would have run some lead core, but running for lines with the action and the turns and the short trolling runs in sections where I was marking the fish would have ended up in one big leadball! I have gotten tangled up with leadcore once and it makes a mess that is nearly impossible to get out. I was doing just fine with the 3-ways..