With the great weather yesterday, I decided to spend the day on the Croix. Launched around 8:30am and fished ’til about 6:30pm. What a beautiful day out there! 
The rain last weekend seems to have dirtied the water a bit; it seemed more muddy than usual and there was quite a bit of floating weeds. The rain also seems to have cooled things off a little (measured 67-68 degrees most places) but I wonder how long that will last with the rest of this week’s weather forecast…
My plan was to attempt to put a few walleyes in the boat first and then go after a couple of sturgeon. I started out trolling two lines – a bluetiger flicker shad pulled behind a number 0 dipsy diver and a perch colored jointed shadrap on leadcore. Within the first half hour, I had a hit on the JSR and pulled a nice 16″ sauger into the boat! I thought “GAME ON!!!! 
“. Never say that… the next hour or so was pretty quiet and I mixed it up a bit by pulling some live bait rigs around a popular fall spot. Nothing there but sheepies…
After a quick sandwich for lunch (thanks Honey! 
), I decided to head up to the Bayport area to try my hand at sturgeon. I wasn’t real sure of what I was doing as I’ve never specifically targeted those before but I’ve read a lot of what has been written here on IDO so I felt confident I knew just enough to be dangerous… I anchored up at a spot that was recommended to me. After two hours of pulling up sheephead, I decided to move and try another spot. First, I thought I’d see if I could find anything else up near shore and managed to tie into a bunch of bluegills on a rockpile in about 10 fow. I then moved deeper and threw out the sturgeon baits… Ended up catching 2 in about an hour and a half – the first (28″er) hit on a gob of crawlers and the second one (32″er) hit on fatheads. Then it was time to head in… 
. On the way back, I decided to toss out the crankbaits again while making my way through the Hudson channel and picked up another sauger (15″) and a walleye (just under 15″), both on the perch JSR.
So even though I didn’t manage any sturgeon worth bragging about, I still had a great day out on the water. The weather is supposed to be excellent the rest of the week so if you can sneak out, do it! I’ll be out again on Friday – if you see a tan/black deep-V with a suzuki outboard, give a shout and say “Hi”.