2/15/2007 9:05:53 AM
GARY CLANCY
The early spring walleye and sauger fishing on the Mississippi River is no secret. By late March or early April, a warm Saturday or Sunday will find more than 100 boats plying the waters from the Red Wing Dam downstream to the head of Lake Pepin.
It’s nothing to wait a half hour or longer to launch or load up your boat at the only public access that is ice-free at this time of the year, the access on the Wisconsin back channel. That’s why I prefer to spend a few dollars and put in at Everett’s Resort. Not only don’t I have to wait in line to put in or take out the boat, but Dean Marshall, who runs the resort and is a darn good fisherman himself, stays current with what’s hot and what’s not, and that kind of insider info is worth what you’ll pay to launch a boat there.
But no matter how you get your boat on the water, do yourself a favor: Don’t wait until March or April to do it. The fishing is good right now. In fact, before the recent cold snap, it had been pretty good all winter. Any day the temperature gets into the 30s will find a dozen or so diehard, bundled-up anglers looking for walleyes and sauger.
But is the fishing worth enduring the cold? Is it really worth battling slick boat ramps, iced-up rod guides and fingers with all of the feeling and dexterity of a frozen Johnsonville brat?
You bet it is. When a nice walleye or stocky sauger smacks your jig, all of the effort it takes to get there and all of the discomfort associated with the cold are instantly forgotten.
Minnows aren’t crucial
For many years, a jig-and-minnow was the prescribed method for catching both walleyes and sauger during the late-winter/early spring bite. There are still times when a 1/4-ounce or 3/8-ounce jig tipped with a fathead is deadly, but most of the serious jig fishermen on the river these days are using plastics or bucktail jigs.
When my buddy Mike Witham and I hit the river in mid-January, Mike tied on a 1/4-ounce jighead and a four-inch ringworm with a Catalpa orange body and chartreuse tail. I started with a 1/4-ounce brown bucktail on one rod and a purple bucktail on the other. There’s no run-off at this time of year, so the current is minimal and you can fish a fairly light jig even in deep water. On that day in mid-January, most of the walleyes and sauger we caught were fairly deep in 23 to 26 feet of water.
We put more than 20 fish in the boat that day, and as is usually the case this time of the year, most of them were taken by vertical jigging — which is impossible without good boat control. The trick is to use an electric motor to adjust the speed at which the boat slides downstream, so that you can present your jig as vertically as possible.
This can be accomplished with a transom-mounted electric motor, but most serious river fishermen prefer a bowmount electric. You point the bow of the boat upstream and adjust the electric motor to control the speed at which you drift downstream. This technique, which is referred to as slipping, sounds difficult, but most anglers who are familiar with their rigs quickly catch on.
On most days on the river, vertical jigging will get the job done, but there are times when either casting or dragging the jig will put more fish in the boat.
Casting works best when the fish are in shallower water. Early and late in the day, it is not uncommon to find fish, especially walleyes, in fairly shallow water. Many of the really big walleyes caught on this stretch of river are taken by fishermen throwing jigs right up against the rip-rap. These fish are best caught by casting a jig and retrieving it just fast enough to keep it near bottom. When the current is negligible as it is now, you can often get the job done with a 1/16-, 1/8- or 1/4-ounce jig. When we have some runoff later on and the current becomes more of a factor, you might have to go with a 3/8-ounce jig.
There are also times when dragging the jig works well. The trick is to move the boat just slightly faster than the current. Dragging only works when the current is light and will not work over anything other than a clean bottom, which on the river usually means sand. If you try dragging over rocks, you will spend more time fighting snags than fish.
Use the right line
Chances are you already have the tackle which will allow you to fish the river effectively. Spinning gear is better suited to jig fishing than either casting rods or spin-cast. Most good jig fishermen prefer a sensitive graphite spinning rod between 51/2 and 61/2 feet long in tandem with a medium-sized spinning reel with a darn good drag.
Mike, like many good jig fishermen, has replaced his monofilament with a super-braid. His preference, and mine, is six-pound test Fireline, a super-tough, super-braid with the same diameter as two-pound test monofilament line.
If fishing on a lake, using a small-diameter is not a major concern. But on the river, the smaller the diameter the less resistance to current. Less resistance on the line makes it easier to keep the line vertical, and that, when combined with the increased sensitivity of the no-stretch super-lines, simply means that you will catch more fish.
It will be a good month or so before cabin fever and the first warm days of early spring work their annual magic and the river is instantly transformed into a beehive of angling activity. Now’s your chance to have one of the best walleye waters in our state virtually to yourself. Go for it!
Gary Clancy of Stewartville has been a weekly feature columnist for the Outdoor News since 1997 and is the author of seven books. Look for his features on hunting and fishing each month on this page.
Click Here to view the story from the Rochester Post Bulliten Web Site with photos
…Look for my funeral announcement next week 
