Where did P11 go?

Finally got the boat back after being shore-bound for a month, so I headed up to take the family to the beach yesterday and maybe make a cast or two on P11.

In the month that I’ve been out of the picture, where did the water go? Are all the pools that low, or is 11 being drawn down? I had planned to take my dad fishing for the first time in about 10 years this Tuesday, but I’d be afraid to try getting into a lot of my usual haunts on 11. If 10 is that low, I doubt I can get to any of the places off the main channel.

By the way, if anyone’s got a place we can pound some CPR fish, shoot me a PM. He doesn’t really fish (like I said, hasn’t been in about 10 years), so we’re not looking for monsters, but numbers would be nice.

I don’t think it’s going to get any better soon without rain. A good friend of mine works for the corps and we were talking about water levels. He said that rain is the only thing left because most dams (including his two) just cannot release any more water without doing some serious damage to the bodies currently holding that water.

He also said that even at current levels, lakes and reservoirs may take up to 2 years to recover to normal levels. On the topic of releasing water he explained that while politicians may think it’s a great idea it’s so late in the year already… releasing water won’t do much good because of the time it takes the water to travel downstream (example northern mn to st paul takes about 3 weeks) as well as the loss of water as it’s inroute (which can be up to half).

So… looks like a rain dance is as good as any atm.

Looks like it worked!

Did the rain we got yesterday have any effect?

We decided to fish P10, based on a hot tip that there was a solid trolling bite going on. Unfortunately, we never got that going, in spite of spending the morning in pursuit of walleyes.

Pool 10 is low, and many of the places I’ve fished with good success in the past are now accessable only by mountain bike, and the only thing you’ll catch there is a rash. We cranked wingdams down by the mouth of the Wisc river for about an hour or two in the morning but didn’t get a single taker. From there, we trolled cranks up along the rip-rap to about a half-mile south of the hwy 18 bridge with no fish on that either.

We moved over into the East channel and started looking for likely bass spots, and were able to put together a little pattern. The shad in the sloughs and around the islands are astounding right now. The clarity is good enough that you can see large clouds of bait with the naked eye. Island points with grass (mixed vegetation better) and shad accounted for all the fish. Attached is a picture of a mid-afternoon bass caught on a super-secret lure* in super-secret spot #324**.

(* white single-willow spinnerbiat)
(** island point immediately north of hwy 18 bridge on east channel)

John,
Good to see you haven’t completely disappeared from the public eye. Did you troll the S bends downstream of the scour hole? Keep the calendar open in Jan and Feb. I’m going to put you on the wintering holes at Urbana and then you won’t have to travel anymore.

I’m still lurking. Heading up to Austin this weekend to pick up the kids – they’ve spent the week with their grandparents.

I’ve been waiting to hit a few spots on the Cedar here around CR, but the boat problems have kept me around the ramp thus far. Now that things are all patched up, I’ll probably try to get out next weekend & see what I can do with the smallmouth bass.

The river is definately low and has been for quite some time now. It did come up around 2-1/2 feet for a brief period but has now dropped again. I’m seeing rocks stick out that I’ve never seen before around DBQ. The walleye bite has died the past few weeks which is quite the turn around from the fantastic fishing we saw here in spring and early summer. There is just no current to hold the fish on structure. I have been going out casting cranks on structure for anything I can find. I did manage to catch the 2 largest smallies I have ever caught on pool 12 this past Monday evening. Both were around 19″ and came from the same location about 6 casts apart. I’ve never thought of pool 12 as a big smallmouth pool. I’ve always caught more and bigger fish in the other pools so this was a real treat. The walleyes are out in the channel now not relating to specific structure. Trolling cranks will put a few fish in the boat but with all the weeds floating down trolling can be darn near impossible. This is the time of year to buy some crawdads and go fish for those 10 to 20Lb sheephead. Lots of fun.

I was out on Pool 6 Wednesday night–I saw dry rock on the river where I have never seen it before.

There is some hope, though. The forecast for the next week is calling for quite a bit of rain in the upper midwest.