How Early?

So I’ve been fishing Pool 4 for a long time. However, with every year that passes I get that much more sick of the hassle that takes place in the river above the lake. I’m not a dam fisherman, and cannot stand any resemblance of the “bumper boat” action that goes on with nice days. I generally catch my best fish 1+ mile away from the dam. Unfortunately this time of year as fish go into their post-spawn tactics, the boatloads of fishermen seem to head downriver and bring the madness with them. This leads to my question…

How early is “too early” to target eyes and saugers on the lower end of the lake (from Lake City, south toward the Chippewa River?? I’m sure there are always a few fish hanging in the area that spawned in other small tributaries…but with current water temperatures and high water, would I be wasting my time doing a little 3-way rigging small cranks, or even trolling lead slowly over the next weeks in these areas?

I also pitch jigs, drag jigs, rig live bait, etc. on occasion depending on a plethora of variables. With some of my fishing partners being far less than “expert” level anglers, pulling lead and 3 way rigging seems to have the smallest learning curve. I generally don’t start trolling until the middle/end of May – but if it’s a tactic that will get me away from others…I’m willing to give it a shot

If avoiding a crowd and catching fish is something you are interested in, I’d highly consider pool 3.

I’d also like to point out that are other places to fish on pool 3 other than the popular Wisconsin side of the confluence in Prescott…Actually almost any of the pool 3 is better than that stretch right now. That stretch currently offers the coldest water in all of pool 3…why fish haven’t been there since early January

Not all of those fish head to the dam to spawn either with plenty of areas used for spawning away from the nut house. I wouldn’t pass up a chance to work the Pepin area right now.

Here on P2 the fish are already sitting on some of their early summer spots in spring lake. This was last weekend and did here some were caught the weekend before as well. So on this section we are ahead of schedule about a week or so from the average dates I usually see the fish back in spring lake. I would never be afraid to get away from the crowd and try something different. It can pay of big at times. Worst case you at least tried and can learn from it.

I’m going to try jigs with a minnow and with plastic tomorrow morning and then plan to switch over to cranks eventually. I will let you know how we do.

Pull cranks with and against the current, with depths ranging from 8′ to 18″ and I got skunked…

The crank bite has been very consistent for the last couple weeks for me, and it is actually producing all of the nicer fish. The fish seem to have dispersed back out pretty good at this point. The key the last few days has been letting the crank dig in the bottom and pumping the rod to trigger the bites. The water is moving pretty fast right now, so when you find one make multiple passes… they’re rarely alone during high current. If you make one pass without a bite in a spot you know should have fish, SWITCH COLORS. I have so many cranks out it looks like a bomb has gone off in my boat right now, ha!

I have also found fishing only one rod seems to be helping because you can pay more attention to keeping the bait clean of debris. You are going to pick up a LOT of leaves running on the bottom.

One of the best parts is I have had these spots all to myself. Like Fishblood said the groups don’t know everything regardless of the pool! Many people seem to fish memories from years past regardless of what the conditions are, and this year has been anything but “normal” in my eyes.