Taylors Falls

Just got back from the Taylors Falls area. The fishing has improved greatly in this area from a few weeks ago. Got on the river at 5 this morning. The water was the lowest i have seen it yet this year, but it came up at least a foot by noon. I took a friend out that just wanted to catch some fish and we more than did that. We got in on a great white bass bite first thing this morning, then moved on to the carp. 1 ten, 1 fifteen. Mario was very happy with this. There was a few small eyes hanging with the carp this morning. We then finished up with some crappies up by rock island. and were done by noon. Not to bad of a morning. Any one else bin out on this stretch of the river? Taylors falls to Osceola. Im hoping to get out again tomorrow morning and spend a little more time chasing the walleyes. I know there in there.

Ive not been out here since earlier this spring…. at first there was a decent eye bite… but as the bigger fish dropped back down to the lake it died down… except for spring Ive not been able to get many nice fish up in this area…. but there are LOTS of smaller fish… LOTS of smallmouth… a decent number of crappies… some musky and pike….. and yeah.. whitebass, though they also mostly move back down river….. and Im pretty sure there are lots of cats around… I dont fish for them but catch them accidentally at times…..
guess thats not much help… Im sure there are some nice eyes around too.. the habitat is sure there…. but they seem to be pretty hard to catch…..

I,ve heard some good reports from this morning. Sounds like the walleyes are on a crawler bight on this part of the river. Im heading out again tommorow morning to chase them around.
Its been pretty interisting to see the changing water levels early in the morning. At sun up the water has been pouring out of peasley lake with lots of fish hanging at the mouth of the channels coming from the lake, but by 10 or 11 the water in the river is up and starting to flow back into the lakes. I think the sand bars are moving by the hour in these spots also. A person has got to be there pretty early in the morning to see this.

Im going to start in front of these areas tommorow with some bottom rigs then i think im going to head up into taylors falls and check out the cliff fishing. there has been a lot of crappie action at rock island but no size so maybe there be some bigger ones up river.

it would be pretty funny if there was an eye bite for decent fish going on up here.. when Ive been going down to prescott!!… Ive heard nothing.. and seen nothing.. but there are always a few that get out and get fish and dont talk about it!
I did hear a couple of weeks ago they were getting some decent crappies from the shore up by TF… as for me.. Ive been hitting the lakes around here for crappies.. there are lots of good panfish lakes around here…. but walleye… the river is king….

I’m pretty sure I’ll find some walleyes in the morning, but your right this area does not seem to be a hot bed for them in the summer months. This is a nice quiet stretch of river with no big boat traffic and it will give up some walleyes if you spend a little time on it. I just love running around on this strech of the river and checking out the different little holes, under trees, cut banks. You never know what you will find. A guy turned me onto a spot where the walleyes where at this morning that Ive fished a couple times last year but never caught a fish there, but i guess the eyes are in there now. I think the caught three keepers out of this 4′ hole this morning. So this is not a spot to spend hours on but I’ll try it in the morning along with a dozen other little spots like it. It does make for some entertaining fishing.

Rivereyes it doesnt sound like anyone else has been out on this strech. I havent heard anyone talk about this part of the river since the opener. I saw three boats on the river sat. morning. thats even pretty slow for a saturday. I supose I,ll have the hole place to myself tommorow. Oh well.

yeah…. a little spot like that burns out pretty fast… this spring and been cold.. and the river has been up a bit.. this has probably held some fish up here a bit longer than normal….. I read a study which showed that in may there were 3-4 times as many fish in the river as in July….. of course with all the beautful habitat that abounds in that stretch there just HAS to be SOME fish… I dont understand why there isnt more… the river is pretty big… and has a LOT of depth and diversity of habitat…. but I guess the alure of the lake is to strong for most of the eyes to resist.. and they run downriver……. its a natural behaviour for fish to move downriver when the water is dropping.. so I guess everytime it drops.. the fish move a bit more down stream…. Ive heard that down towards Marine there are quite a few more decent fish that stay resident…. but I have not actually fished it to find out…. if Im going that far… I just as well launch at beanies and hit the big water…..
though… for sure this upper strectch has much less boat traffic.. and the minimum wake rules assure you that your not going to get swamped…. but the vast rafts of canoes that come down stream at around 10 (just like the pleasure boats in the big lake) kind of drive me crazy….. they are in huge packs… you cant even move without bumping into them….

Hey RiverEyes, What report is that?
I would like to read it if you still have it. It seems difficult to get any study info on the croix. A few years ago the did a creel survey around Bayport and I never did see the info.

As far as the minimum speed zone I was North of Copas on Memorial day and saw at least half a dozen boats through out the day at full speed or close to it. I suppose it was because the river was still high. I even saw 2, 20′ Rangers up there! I guess they didn’t know or figured they wouldn’t get caught.

Ferny.

What another great day to be on the river. It might as well had been two or three different day with all the weather changes out there today. Sun, clouds, wind, no wind, even had some white caps north of Osceola today.
At least the fish showed up again today. The usually gang was all there. A few walleyes first thing in the morning. Then the big carp. And then all the whities came by for a while. What a great bight they have been providing this year. I tryed a 5′ floating rap on them and they just about took the pole out of my hands. How big do these fish get? I got one that went 3# today. What a nice fighter. Anyway I finished the day of again at rock island with the crappies. They are still running a little small but i did end up with 6 that went 12″.
I also did a little tackle hunting todaywith a little luck there to. Its kinda like shopping up here some times. I was checking over one log jam when I spotted a pack of fish hanging on a log in the water. Always something new on the river. It turned out to be 5 smallies and a sucker tied to a stick with mono fishing line. Still alive. Any Ideas on how this happened? I did cut them loose and they swam away. Poor little fellers. I guess I did my good deed for today.
Well i guess after this weekend i will have to venture out on a different strech of the river. Anyone got some good info from around marine. Maybe i will even get out there some time agian this week. Fishing is good on the Osceola part of the croix, but it does seem to play the same old tune over and over again in the summer months.

In the Marine area the action has been spotty. The past 10 days have seen a fair number of Walleyes hitting crankbaits. Going back to the conversation earlier , I agree , the fish leave for the bigger water now. I’ve seen all the best Walleye activity from the last week of May to The first 10 days of June every year. After that the only Walleyes You see are little 8 inchers I beleive are resident until they grow larger! Around Marine our attention now turns to Smallies.

Was up in the TF area a week or so ago and had fairly good success from the shore on the crappies and the bass. You have to sit high up in the cliffs so you have to be especially careful there so you dont slip and fall. But what seems to work best for me is when I act as if i am walleye fishing and use a 1/4 ouncechartruse/lime jig with a crappie minnow. You get a lot of snags buty that is how you get the fish to bite. Also I do ok on a slip bobber and flu flu jig. Walleyes seem to move out by the time the opener roles around with maybe a few saugers that hang around TF.