Croix Report w/ Pics

Had a very unexpected and very productive day on the Croix Friday am. Took the day off, invited some neighbors to fish, and hit the water at 7 am. Had everything rigged for smallies.

Funny thing happened on the way to the …….ran into several schools of walleye/sauger. Never did get to fishing bass , instead caught 17 eyes/sauger from 7 – 10:30.

Trolling was the trick, 11-12 fow, 3.2-3.5 mph. Red craw was hot but only had one of them. Glass purple sunfire was next, followed by firetiger and brown craw. #7’s slightly better than #5’s.

Here’s a pic, albeit not a very good one of four fish from our basket of 7 keepers.

Eric

sweet! Nothing better than when Mother Croix provides a nice surprise!

(By the way, thanks for the tip . It sure was nice to put my wife, daughter and daughter’s friend onto some fish… )

Whats Up with that one fish?

which one? the sauger??? I’ve noticed saugers out of the Croix this summer tend to be darker and more colored than before…

We were wondering the same. The larger saug in the pic had red spots all over. When I cleaned it, the meat was fine, but it looks odd.

Anything I should be concerned about? The other saugs we kept and caught did not have these marks, just this one fish.

I really need to get out to the croix soon. have to convince my buddy the walleye will be just as fun as Muskie, and Pike.

Nice fish. Had everything rigged for smallies and caught walleye/saug. How’d that happen. I’ve been thinking of hitting it for smallies myself.

Had one set of rods rigged with senkos, one set with tubes, one set with cranks. The cranks went in the water first and started catching eyes. Never got to the other two sets of rods.

Nice report, thanks for sharing!

Went out this am, 5:30 – 9:30. Same depth, same speeds. Same results though not as many eyes. Picked up a dozen fish, 6 we kept and will fry up tomorrow.

No dominant color on the cranks today, we had a firetiger jointed on all day on one line, towards the end I had a small rally on #7 clown. Nothing on the red craw today.

Nobody last week was fishing near us, today, 1 boat but I don’t think they were doing what we were. Keep the speeds up, going below 3.0 and I started getting very small smallies. Did manage a small flathead as first fish today. Hmmm…

Good luck, this is a very consistent bite on the Croix right now.

Eric

nice job Eric! I knew I should have stayed in that area pulling cranks but I wanted to check out a few other spots to see if the livebait bite would work – it didn’t. Marked fish but they seemed more scattered. Don’t know if it was the cold or the wind.

We did pick up a couple of nice smallies (a 16″ and a 15″) pulling crawler harnesses behind bottom-bouncers. They were in 20+ feet of water!

The winds finally drove us off the water around 11:30 – we were headed in when the flotilla of cigarette boats made their way into the Hudson marina area. Anyone know what was up with that?