Please help the river newbie out

Thanks Matt I owe you some lattes

John Rasmussen wrote:

Ok any line preferences on them? And what length would you start with for leader to bait and leader to bottom?

For the low flow and slower presentation.
Keep at 45° adjust weight accordingly.
1′ drop
3′ lead
1/16 oz jig.

4′ lead with hook only.
I run 14-20# mono or flouro

My dropper I run with a loop knot for fast weight changes(jigs when on border).

John Rasmussen wrote:

Thanks Matt I owe you some lattes

Just let me know how the bite is….might head to P3 Sunday. Need some meat.

Matt Moen wrote:

Just let me know how the bite is….might head to P3 Sunday. Need some meat.

Consider it done! Shoot me a PM Saturday night in case I forget. I am only on the forum in my down time at work.

Is a three-way totally necessary when pulling cranks right now, or just preferred to get shallower running baits to depth? Would lead be just as effective? And any pointers on speed with the current conditions? I’m assuming on the slow side?

Thanks for any tips. More of a summer p2 guy but gonna take advantage of the great weather this week.

So we didn’t make it out today, my buddy is under the weather. Hoping tomorrow works. Will try to report back. I already put my boat away and wouldn’t try it on my own being a newb anyway.

St croix up in my area is fully heated up right now. I have a open seat if you’d ever want to go out in my rig. I’ll show you a few tricks that I’ve learned

dirtywater wrote:

Is a three-way totally necessary when pulling cranks right now, or just preferred to get shallower running baits to depth? Would lead be just as effective? And any pointers on speed with the current conditions? I’m assuming on the slow side?

Thanks for any tips. More of a summer p2 guy but gonna take advantage of the great weather this week.

Lead would work just fine. A lot of guys pull lead on the main channel. The nice thing about a 3 way is you can get down and get 2 baits in front of the fish. A little easier to fish imho too.

Matt Moen wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Dirty Water wrote:</div>
Is a three-way totally necessary when pulling cranks right now, or just preferred to get shallower running baits to depth? Would lead be just as effective? And any pointers on speed with the current conditions? I’m assuming on the slow side?

Thanks for any tips. More of a summer p2 guy but gonna take advantage of the great weather this week.

Lead would work just fine. A lot of guys pull lead on the main channel. The nice thing about a 3 way is you can get down and get 2 baits in front of the fish. A little easier to fish imho too.

Thanks Matt. I have a lot of experience pulling lead and almost none w/ 3-ways, so it’s kind of a comfort zone thing for me. I’ll rig up one rod w/ a 3-way and give it a shot.

Bearcat89 wrote:

St croix up in my area is fully heated up right now. I have a open seat if you’d ever want to go out in my rig. I’ll show you a few tricks that I’ve learned

Thanks bearcat, sounds like my buddy is good to go so we are going to hit it tomorrow. Again thank you everyone who replied and messaged me, you guys rock! Ready or not here we go.

I’ll be on pool 4 tomorrow so if anyone sees a ranger with a barber pole wrapped net sticking up feel free to say hello

Were you able to find some fish? We ended doing pretty well. The fish seem to be on the move. We would find a nice school of fish, and after a few passes they would be gone, and I would start moving again until I would find the next pod of fish. Beautiful day out there. I saw BK go by, stop and perform some odd boat maneuvers across from me, back up and then head down river only to come back by about 10 minutes later.

Well we did get out Sunday. Started on the wind dams and only caught one smallie. Ran up by the Hastings marina area and tried running 3 ways and either I am doing it wrong or you guys know where every bleeping rock is and lift it out of the way or something. Lol. We lost some stuff lets just say. We ended the adventure vertical jigging under and around the bridge in Presscott as that was what we saw a lot of people doing. Caught a couple sauger nothing over 14″ and skinny so went home empty handed but that’s just fine for the first outing.

I said it before, but I really can’t thank you guys enough. I am happy to call you guys my “internet friends” and really hope to share time with as many of you as I can. To the guys that sent me spots and gave me direction I owe you a cold beverage or two, and will happily pay up as soon as I can.

Prescott Huh?
You should have parked the boat and went to the Monkey Bar.
Alotta action there!

Eelpoutguy wrote:

Prescott Huh?
You should have parked the boat and went to the Monkey Bar.
Alotta action there!

Maybe next time!

Stuck closer to home and fished from downtown to the confluence on pool 2.Lots of dinks with some 16″-18″ walleyes and saugers here and there,a few white bass and channel cats mixed in.Biggest fish was a sauger over 21″.Trolling,jigging,casting crankbaits didnt seem to matter they bit whatever.

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Wow nice sauger Matt! Glad you did good.

Here is a nice one we got yesterday

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mojogunter wrote:

Here is a nice one we got yesterday

You forgot to cover up the map 😆

Nice fish mojo.I can’t get over how blue the sky is up there.

What did ya throw to get the fish to bite mojo ? Nice walleye . I can’t seem to figure them out on P4 last 2-3 outings, other than 14 inch saugers at the dam .

It hit a #7 smash shad. FBRM: I looked at the map and thought if someone wanted to look that close to figure out where I was on the map go for it. If I didn’t block out the other stuff it would be obvious where I was, and if the fish are still there next week I didn’t want 40 boats there.

isu22andy wrote:

What did ya throw to get the fish to bite mojo ? Nice walleye . I can’t seem to figure them out on P4 last 2-3 outings, other than 14 inch saugers at the dam .

I fished pool 3 on Sunday. I did best casting dams south of P city. #7 flicker shads did best. I did toss plastics too but no fish on the plastics. Everything I caught was cranking the dams. Pretty slow over all but did bring a few home for the pan so will call it a good day. It was super nice out there!!

I did run up into the croix and pull 3ways for an hour with a 1 short walleye to show for it.