Wing dam……… Sunfish?????

This morning (8/19) I set out to search for walleyes on the upper part of pool 4. I have really never have fished wing dams ever and was going to give’r a try. I set up on a dam was fishing with a crawler on a rig and my first fish was a big sunfish, I’m talking like a pounder! The next fish was about a ten pound carp, then I caught and realeased four more of these huge sunfish. My question to all you avid wing dam fisher people is this common to catch these big panfish on a wing dam? Or is it a fluke? As you can tell I was pretty excited about those sunfish being I haven’t caught one over 3 ounces in fifteen years…. LoL

Yes. If there has been one common theme to all the fishing reports on pool 8 lately, it is that numbers of panfish, bluegills/sunfish in particular, are holding on wing dams. This same thing happened last year about this time when the river stage dipped to sub normal readings. I think Jimmy O has reported this happening on his end several times and I believe that Lawrence Ecklor has mentioned this too. There simply just isnt enough water for their liking in their usual haunts and sometimes they prefer a slight current.

Steve Hougom – FTR Webstaff

I’ve been picking up quite a few gills on my favorite wings also. Last time out there were large numbers of small bluegills robbing my worm tipped jig. I switched to a Blue and Orange Wally Diver, moved and caught several very nice eyes on the same wings. Must have been feeding on the gills. I had tried other colors of cranks earlier, but when I tied on the Bluegill appearing one the walleyes really hammered it!

I’ve been experiencing the same thing on Pool 9 the last two or three weeks. Today we nailed some slabbers again. I’d rather hook into eyes, but these fish are fun to catch too. I agree with Hougie, with the water being so low the fish are moving out where the can find a little current