Report

09/15/04 Lower St. Croix River walleye and sauger fishing from Stillwater, Minnnesota down south to Prescott, WI has improved in recent days. Anglers putting up with wind and rain are seeing better results in numbers and size, saugers still make up over half the catch but 16” saug dogs are common, walleyes are not bad in size though nothing huge reported. Live bait rigs with small suckers and shiners, large fathead tipped jigs, spinners with the same larger minnows, and trolled crankbaits are catching fish. Best depths have varied but 22 to 30 feet is a solid starting point. White bass are turning up more in the catches. Smallies are hitting better and a top water morning bite is to be had. Daytime depths continue to catch bronze backs on plastic tubes, tails, and worms and livebait (crawlers and fatheads) in the 12 to 22 foot range. Water temperature is 68 degrees and the river level is 676.23 feet above sea level in Stillwater, Minnesota.

Keep Catchin’
Turk

thanks for the report Turk, is the smallies surface bite based more on lower water temp than time of Fall?? is so what temps do you feel is better for a surface bite. thanks, Jack..

Jack,
Hello, I guess that i find the surface bite to be more of a time of day thing. Not all mornings or evenings are good surfaxce bite, it’s like any other bite , they come and they go. It just happens that a surface bite is going on in the early mornings. I don’t really have it dialed into a temperature situation. Good luck hope this helps!
Turk

I was suprised at how little the river showed any sign of the heavy rain. Just for fun I went to one of my favorite spring spots and found fish in 18 feet of water. Didn’t stay there long at all and I picked up a nice sauger and keeper eye dragging crawlers. Found the smallies to be semi active on shore. Got a couple decent ones but no bigs. Occasionally some silvers would explode on the surface but they would quit before I could make it to them. Trolled for about 30 minutes with no action other than a puny bass. All in all I saw more action than I thought I would and it was a pleasant 3 hours on the water.