Pool 6 Crappies and Gills

I took a long walk today for a nice 4 hour outing in the beautiful mid February weather. Man was it nice today!! With nothing but a sweatshirt and bibs on, i left the power auger and shack in the truck and hoofed it about a mile one way with nothing but a bucket, lazer hand auger, and flasher. I didn’t know how the bite would be when I got there but figured it would either be awesome or a complete bomb. Luckily it was airing on the side of pretty darn good. The first thing I noticed was that it was deep. I knew there was deep water in there but not as much as there turned out to be. The second thing was the abundance of fish. A lot of marks were hanging in the bottom 4 feet of the water column in 22 ft. Using a small jigging spoon tipped with a waxie, the first fish came to the ice with about 10 minutes of tweaking with my jigging cadence. Despite mild temperatures and setting up to be what most people would consider a “hot bite” type of day, these fish weren’t overly willing to hit just any old bait with any old jigging technique. It took a little bit of finesse and knowing exactly when to jig aggressively. There is a certain moment on a flasher when you just know that the mark is about to start screaming toward your bait. I took advantage of that knowledge and it worked to put a lot of nice fish on the ice today with both the spoon, and especially a diamond jig tipped with a gulp minnow. The trick was to start with the bait well above the fish. I let the bait free fall only to pick it back up right before the bait reaches the fish’s eye level with a quick “pulsating while raising” technique. I would repeat this process until the mark would start to shift in a positive direction and at that moment it was obvious that I had won that fish over. The next step is to just hold the rod steady and keep raising it. Usually the fish’s agression will intensify as you continue to raise the bait. At just the right moment I would stop the bait and usually they would slam it. After some tweaking I had the system nailed down and had a solid hour and a half of peak action where I put at least a dozen quality fish on the ice, all of which were released. In that time frame i did not catch a single non keeper fish (though I did catch a few later) including several gills over 8″ and several crappies around 11 inches with 2 chunks that fell between 11-1/2″ and 12″. Overall it was a fun day. I am anxious to get back to this area with a little more time in the future. I marked schools of baitfish in every hole I fished, and had green weeds of three different species in just about every hole I fished as well! We’ll just have to wait and see what the weekend brings, hopefully it is some productive fishing!

Cade

Nice

Nice recap and pics Cade

I’ve had a hard time just finding fish in the areas I normally fish, then you go to a new area and find fish. Good job putting it all together Cade.

Nice report and fish

Cade, how do you find these places? Do you use the boat in the summer to mark find the location then GPS it?

Google maps is a great tool for fishing locations. Also knowing areas from open water fishing experience helps a great deal. On the river, even though there aren’t many great depth maps available, especially for pool 6, sometimes you can make pretty accurate educated guesses as to the depths of different backwater areas judging by the shoreline, trees in the area, or lack of them, and especially the presence or lack of matted or visible aquatic vegetation in the summer months. The rest is letting curiosity take over and being willing to take risks.

Well done, sir!

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Google maps is a great tool for fishing locations. Also knowing areas from open water fishing experience helps a great deal. On the river, even though there aren’t many great depth maps available, especially for pool 6, sometimes you can make pretty accurate educated guesses as to the depths of different backwater areas judging by the shoreline, trees in the area, or lack of them, and especially the presence or lack of matted or visible aquatic vegetation in the summer months. The rest is letting curiosity take over and being willing to take risks.

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OR you just go to a spot that guys have been telling you have been good.

Yes that is very true, word of mouth gives certain areas more attention than others. But an angler must remember that on the river there really are no secrets. The worst is when someone tells you to try an area that you were already thinking of fishing, then when you go there suddenly it is assumed that you went there per their suggestion. I had my boat in this area one time last fall. I’ve kept my eyes on the area and have known that it has received some traffic. I chose to hit it at a time when there seemed to be very little to no recent traffic and it seemed to pay off. Timing is everything if you ask me when it comes to fishing the river. Unless you can find a spot that literally doesn’t see a foot print for the entire winter.