Well, I finally made it back on the water again, and found plenty of fish ready to cooperate on Tuesday. I began down stream on rip rap about dawn, and found a few fish in 8-10′ of water, but none up shallow on the riprap. Picked up my fishing partner at 8:00 and we headed for the dam. Reports from others at the dam was that the bite was slow.
We picked up a couple saugers up near the dam in 16-20′ of water on Super Dos dead sticking, then moved down to the “flats” and trolled some 3 ways. The bite on the flats was very good for an hour or so, trolling 45 degrees across the current. 3-ways with a couple red beads and minnows was best for numbers of fish, while stick baits caught far less fish, but larger ones. Several eater saugers and a few decent walleyes, as well as a couple large egg ladden saugers on the flats, then the fished move off to the channel edge, and turned off.
We worked our way back up to the Iowa shore line rocks, and after a lot of experimenting found a way to bring lots more fish to the boat. Jigs were being short hit, no hits at all with a stinger in place, so I went to a light, plain hook 3 way that just maintained bottom contact in the back current area. Fish still would not hit while the 3 way was moving, but I found if you hovered over fish and “jigged” the 3 way off bottom a few inches then stopped and held it in place, they would pick it up. No bite, just weight on the line. We managed a couple nice limits of eaters and several more fat mama saugers, and one 19″ walleye with this technique over a couple hours. It also gave me a good opportunity to get the rust out of the boat control skills! Drift or troll, stop, hover, over and over. It was a great day at the dam on a relatively slow bite.
We moved down stream and looked over several wing dams, and there are definetly a lot of fish holding on the wings, but we were out of time and had our limits for the pan. Fish were stacked up on the tops of most of the wing dams that I crossed, and seemed to be from mid dam to near the tip.
Water temp was 40 degrees, flow was about 42000 cu.ft./minute, and air temp was in the low 30’s early, warming to about 50 later in the day. Light south winds.
Good luck to all who venture out. The bite is definetly on. 
John
March 25, 2004 at 12:44 pm
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