I am practically brand new to the river with less than a season under my belt, and even more new to pool 2. Getting to know the lay of the land has been my main priority since getting on pool 2 for the first time just a few weeks ago. To cover the most ground, I decided to get out the cranks and just troll. Troll, troll and troll some more.
Saturday, my wife and I were supposed to hang out all day, but thanks to the rain “our” plans got squashed and I was able to get away to the river. 
I got down to the 494 launch at about 11:30 to find it barely usable. Rootskie was down there checking things out and I got a chance to meet and chat with another IDO’er. Thanks for all the advice Rootskie, especially the advice about launching out of Willie’s Hidden Harbor when the other launches are unusable! After failing miserably last weekend at my first attempt with wing dam fishing, my goal for Saturday was to get off the main channel and into the backwaters. With more time exploring than fishing on Saturday, I only managed 5 walleyes with the biggest being 23. Even with the low numbers, I really felt like I was starting to understand what I was looking for in structure.
Armed with the knowledge I got from Saturday, I rounded up Laura (my wife) and Cappy (our dog) and headed back to the river on Sunday. This was definitely the more the productive of the two days. We ended up with 19 walleyes and 2 sauger. We had one that went 27, a few that went 23 and the rest were in the middle/high teens. There is nothing more satisfying than being able to put someone you care about on fish. Plus, the more fish the wife catches the more likely she is to come out with me next time. Thereby getting me on the water more! This is the first season I have been able to take my 1 ½ year old chocolate lab in the boat with me. It hasn’t taken him long to know the drill. When the motor shuts off, people stand up and the net comes out it means there is a fish. Each time there is a hook up, he just about loses it trying to get at the fish.
We were trolling #5 shad raps and #5 shadlings. Shadlings by far out produced the shad raps. The shadlings run just a little bit deeper and with a large majority of our bites coming immediately after bottom contact it didn’t take long to build our confidence in this lure. Color did not matter seem to matter one bit. We lost a few cranks over the weekend and as we lost a color that had been hot, a new hot color was born with whatever was pulled out of the tackle box. Probably the most important thing to note is that all of the shadling colors have a metallic finish of some sort so to a walleye seeing the bottom and side of the bait they all probably looked similar. We did not fish any water deeper than 10’. Almost all of our fish came between 6 and 9 fow. The key for us was getting off the main the channel and finding current in those depth ranges. If there was rock in the vicinity, a fish or two was pretty much guaranteed. It looks like the water levels are going rise slightly before leveling off over the next week. I would expect this pattern to hold while the water remains at or near its current level. There is a lot of floating debris in the water so be careful out there!
Drew
