Pool 9 Old School Walleyes

My son and I fished our home pool this weekend. We arrived friday evening at our place on the River got the truck on loaded and settled in for the weekend. We grilled an relaxed sat by the fire and talked fishing. Talked about by Dad an his old boat. Or “Poppys” boat an how he taught me the river. Saturday morning couldn’t come soon enough. As morning arised we were headed down to the boat house wich is a stones throw from my place. An jumped into “Poppys” boat. An we were off . No trolling motor no depth finder rod holders etc..We started fishing wingdams with live bait rigs or as some will call the simple river rig. Number 7 red Eagle Claw bait holder. In line swivel with around a 2 ft Snell maybe shorter an a 1/4 Oz barrel sinker. Working the tips of the dam. We found high numbers of fish especially a lot of short walleyes . The biggest 20 inches. After fishing them I said this wouldn’t be right if we didn’t go troll the back waters. An the trolling bite was on working sand an clam beds in the sloughs. A great morning we were limited out by 11 am.

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I remember with great fondness opening days back in the 1970s, fishing on the river much as you describe.

In particular, I recall when the first true deep-running Rapala came out, the Fat Rap. To be able to get to the bottom much more easily and in different currents was so incredible it felt like cheating.

I think it was 1977, for whatever reason the walleyes were right on the bottom behind wing dams. We could get to them on every pass with the new Fat Raps whereas many other boats were struggling with the older style crankbaits like floating raps, Lazy Ikes, etc where they could not get down in the current. We absolutely took advantage of it, we were getting 2-3 fish per pass all morning.

The next year, 1978, there was a very sudden warm up for spring where it had been very cold and wet until mid may and then suddenly it was in the 70s and 80s every day. We found the walleyes in very shallow backwaters in post-spawn mode and in places it seemed like every fish within a one mile stretch of river was in one 50 yard section of backwater. The truly odd thing about it was that we found them at noon on a bright, sunny day, with the temps in the 80s in 5-6 feet of water.

In my mind, I can still hear dad’s old 1963 9.8 HP Mercury trolling down to barely moving speed. It was 1976 when dad first felt flush enough to buy his first non-wooden boat, a 13 foot Alumacraft. Depth finders? We wouldn’t have one of those for 5-6 years yet.

Great times.

Grouse