Pool 2 9/4 Report

My wife and I both decided to play hooky from work yesterday, and head down to pool 2. In the past, I would have already logged between 50-60 trips to Pool 2 by this time of year. However, my Pool 2 time has been significantly reduced with a new baby and new family cabin on Mille Lacs. This was only my 4th trip to the river since the beginning of June. I am hoping to get out on the river more as Fall approaches.

Lucky for me, late summer patterns were holding true and a lot of my usual trolling runs produced fish. I had wanted to spend some time on wing dams, but I just couldn’t pull myself away from a fantastic trolling bite. All said and done, we caught 21 Walleyes and Sauger. Considering the locations that we were trolling, I was expecting to catch a lot more Sauger than we did. Not only were the number of Walleyes up, but so was the average size. We only caught one fish under 17″. We had 2 @ 25″, 2 @ 24″, and 1 @ 23″. Everything else was in between.

We only caught one fish trolling downstream. All the rest were smacking cranks trolled up stream at 2 – 2.5 mph. I thought that the flow was a little quicker than normal for this time of year. I am generally looking for main channel current to fish at the end of summer, but yesterday the fish were definitely relating to inside shore structure where the current was significantly reduced. Usually, fish are spread out across my trolling runs. Today though, the fish were grouped up tight. Once we found a couple of fish, we focused our time making short and tight trolling runs in that area. There are some days when pumping the rod makes a big difference, and then there are days where the rod should be in a rod holder. This was definitely a rod pump day. If we were not pumping the rods, we were not getting bit. We only fished 4 locations, and all 4 locations produced. We could have easily spent more time and caught many more fish, but we were chased off in the afternoon by incoming storms.

I am far too familiar with river fishing to think that this pattern will hold for any length of time. But that is not going to stop me from getting out this weekend and giving it a go!

-Drew

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Good day to play hooky! Nice work.

-J.

Nice fish, Drew!

What time of day were you fishing? I would like to make it out next week but it would be later in the afternoon.

Great report and great fish!

Looks like a good trip Drew. Was half expecting to see a photo of the little one with a fishing pole in her hands.

Mike W wrote:

Looks like a good trip Drew. Was half expecting to see a photo of the little one with a fishing pole in her hands.

I am anxiously awaiting that day!

Great report Drew…Mid Summer trolling is one of my favorite ways to fish P2. I have had some luck trolling this Summer but have not caught big fish like you did.

You are right about the fish here today and gone tomorrow on P2. Guess that’s what makes it fun though.

Nice report and sounds like a very successful day. I still have yet to get a pitching bite going, still trying to learn that. I have always been successful at trolling, but nothing like you experienced!!