I was in the Twin Cites this past weekend trying to find some sky carp (geese). Saturday morning my hunting partner and I set out 60 Big Foot decoys waiting for some hungry geese to descend on our spread in a cut cornfield. Well, it wasn’t meant to be as the sky was void of geese that morning. Of course, as we drove a few miles towards the town of Farmington we saw hundreds of geese in their urban sanctuary.
Dejected from the poor hunt, I was looking for a Plan B to salvage my weekend. Matt Ernst contacted me seeking a sidekick to hit the river on Sunday. Perfect!
Matt and I met just before 11 AM in Prescott and the plan was to go on a big fish hunt. We spent a little over an hour pitching cranks and a jig/minnow combo to a wingdam that has a history of kicking out nice ‘eyes in the fall. The stars weren’t aligned for us. We shifted up-stream a few hundred yards and vertical jigged a current seam that looked promising. I connected with a plump sauger just as we were ready to pull up stakes. It was nice to dust off my memories of the vigor and spunk those saugers will give you this time of year. The water temp gauge said it was 42 degrees, but I swear those saugers fight like that to stay warm. 
Our primary goal wasn’t to work over saugers, so Matt put a blind fold over my eyes and brought me to his glory spot that helped him place second at the PWT event last month. The spot Matt was fishing is a sharp transition area that bottoms out around 45 feet. Ideally, he wanted to rig the area with creek chubs. He wasn’t able to get the big chubs, so we used shiners. The graph was showing this spot was still very fishy, but we weren’t able to connect with any fish. Matt slowed down our presentations to a slow creep to try to entice a bite without any luck.
It was time to go out and get the string stretched a little, so we spent our last couple of hours exploring a couple community holes on the St Croix. The chatter on the water was that the bite was quite slow. It wasn’t in-line with the Red Wing bite that has been describes as suicidal.
It seemed the approach that Matt and I employed was working a little better than the rest of the crowd. We were keying in water 25’ to 30’ and slowing working over defined pods of fish. These fish was sitting in close proximity to bait clouds. I would suspect they were shad. We continued to rig the shiners. We tried fatheads, but the results didn’t compare to the use of shiners.
We didn’t do any trolling, so I didn’t get to demo the Bulldog Strike Sensors it was nice to see the final product. I had used them a few years back when they were still in the R&D phase. I think a nice application for these would be when I troll alone I’m facing portside and I need to constantly turn around to check my starboard rod(s).
It was also a treat for me to use Matt’s gear. I wasn’t prepared to fish, so Matt put 6’8” medium power extra fast St Croix Legend Elite in my hand. It was paired nicely with a Shimano Stella 2500. I have played with this reel many times at the store, but what a treat to fish with it. Please don’t tell the wife I fished with Stella…and loved it. 
What a great day to be on the water. It was hard to believe the calendar was telling us it was the last week of November.
Thanks again for letting me ride along, Matt!
