Thanksgiving Walleyes on the river.

Thanksgiving week and river fishing go great together. Jon, KWP and myself heading out for a while last night knowing the bite wasnt going to be fantastic but not a chance we where going to let these weather conditions go by with out trying to boat a few more fish. My goal for the evening was to boat 6 walleyes. We ended up doubling that with Ken sticking a nice 27″er for big fish of the evening. Slow presentation and finding areas with reduced current was key for boating a few fish. Its was commented about getting the rod holders more than once to just hold baits in the current. Pitching Pulsars and stick baits to rock piles found our fish. Many times just a toss of the lure out and hold the rods to trigger strikes. Not fast fishing but still fun to feel that thunk at the end of the line.

Good luck to anyone getting out this week and Happy Thanksgiving.

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Crunch!! Awesome night and photos, thanks for posting for us who can’t get out. Hoping to get out tonight.

Thanks for the great time Jon and Mike. It was really fun fishing with you guys. I think we did pretty well considering the flow is still over 4X normal for this time of the year. Making those small adjustments where to fish and presentations made all the difference for us.

Fun trip as always! Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

-J.

nhamm wrote:

Crunch!! Awesome night and photos, thanks for posting for us who can’t get out. Hoping to get out tonight.

. Good luck tonight. Have had some pretty decent fishing trips over the years in some not so good weather. I’m still hoping to get out again over the weekend. With the way the flow is up don’t see the river freezing anytime soon.

This was from Friday on pool 4. Sure was chilly. I was lucky and found fish on my second spot. First 6 fish were taken anchored in the same spot just holding 5/16 oz jigs and plastics on the slow side of a current seam. We were in a about 15 fow really tight to shore. Darn spotlock had me concerned a few times when the wind picked up. Then we started drifting and vertical jigging same area and caught another one or two on each drift the whole afternoon. Checked a few other spots to end the day and found nothing, current was too much. In our good spot we were only drifting about 0.4, all the other spots the slowest I found was 1.0. Didn’t seem to find a pattern in plastics, we switched a lot and caught fish on almost everything; moxies, paddle tails, flukes and one on hair. Gonna give it another go tomorrow morning. With flow still coming down I hoping to find more spots with a little slower water.

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Anyone know why all my pictures are sideways?

Oh, and we lost a nice mid 20s walleye boatside. Water clarity was close to a foot and we got a good look at her right before netting it and she came unbuttoned.

Going over notes for myself, it seems like most my fish during cold water like to hold on the backside of strucutres, or that seam downstream from it. Don’t have wingdams in the stretches I fish, just natural structure, but curious to where many guys find them.

Typically warmer water they will be on the front side of a jutting out rock pile, right at the base, or when aggressive on the tops. Seems the colder it gets I find them now on the backside of these islands, downstream from bridge pilings, and the current seams again on the backside, and every once in a while on the tips.

Is it still worth pounding the faces of these strucutres? I would assume the most aggressive fish would hold there but doesn’t seem the case for myself that any do this time of year.

Got out tonight for an hour with the 7yr old, had a bite dead sticking a minnow with a tailhooked rainbow, but wasn’t expecting much. Went to the CR dam and with water so high not much slack water in the area. When the moon showed up we were about leaving, but a beautiful night either way.

Pretty slow for us this evening on 2. Caught 4 walleyes. We are still finding most of our fish on top of dams. Just been looking for ones with less flow.

Was out on pool 4 today and boy did we get em good. 40 saugers, one walleye, and one large flathead boated today. Temps were very comfortable too. The flathead was not snagged, had my jig and moxie in the upper lip. Took about 10 mins to get it to the boat, the thing pulled us up and down the river for a couple minutes, I thought about cutting the line once I finally felt it let up a bit. Was brought in on 6lb mono and a ML rod! Crazy thing was not more then 10 minutes later on the same rod, jig, and plastic I hooked into what I thought was a really nice walleye. Lots of weight, good head shakes, get it up the boat rather quickly and my wife says “it’s a shark!”. Nope, just a sturgeon that was probably mid 50″s. That thing took one look at the boat and sizzled the drag on my little 1500 reel so hard it almost started a fire and line snapped not too long after. But cool to see it boatside. Anyway, great day and it looks like next weekend will be no different with temps reaching upper 30’s. Boat is doing overtime this year, love it. Don’t care if the otter is getting lonely in the shed!

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You must have been fishing in a triton. I saw the catfish. Did you measure how long it was?

Yup, that was me in the triton. We didn’t measure, I have a 30lb scale and I didn’t think that would have done the job. I later said, I don’t really care exactly how big it was, because I just know it was BIG.

To scale the picture a bit, I’m 6’2″ and still over 300lb on a good day.

What boat were you in Mojo?

White and red Stratos just down river from you all day. I did make one run up by the group of boats you were near. We didn’t get as many fish as the boats by you. I think about 15-20. Mix of eyes and sauger. Here are the six I brought home. Fun day out there. Bite has improved big time from the last several trips I have made down there.

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Yeah I saw you. Cool. I was surprised by the sauger:walleye ratio today. On Friday we were fishing the same drift and it was about 50:50. Although, we only caught half the number of fish, but I think I’d attribute that to the waters coming down quite a bit since then and improving the bite. Today only one walleye, but it was a nice 20″. About 8 of our saugers were very nice pushing the 19″ mark. Fun day for sure.

our thanksgiving was much slower. we have way too much water down here and its making the wingdams unfishable and up at the dam kind of tricky. I had 3 others in my boat so we vertical jigged slack water close to the dam and picked up a few eaters but nothing significant.