Weekend Report Pool 2.

Sure felt more like August this weekend than Sept. Rootski and I hit the river early Saturday morning. Well not as early as a lot of guys. There was all ready a good number of empty trailer in the parking lot at 494 at 630am when I got there. We started out pitching bait and casting crank baits to a couple of wing dams with nothing but a couple of bumps. These are usually pretty consistent dams so with out catching a fish on them I figured it was time to try something different.

We made one quick stop at some shoreline rocks where Steve picked up our 1st walleye of the morning. A nice 24″er. Next we moved up river to start trolling a shallower stretch of the river that has been decent for numbers lately. It didnt take us to long to see the fish where still in there. 1, 2, or 3 fish per trolling pass made for some pretty decent action. We didnt spend much time playing with crank bait colors. Red was the color of the morning.

Think we must of picked up around 15 walleyes/saugers in the next couple of hours. Most where mid sized fish running 15 to maybe 20″s and most where walleyes. It wasnt until we moved deeper into the channel at 13 to 14 feet that the saugers started showing up. Our shallowest fish came out of 7′.

Nice fish, guys!

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Well not as early as a lot of guys. There was all ready a good number of empty trailer in the parking lot at 494

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Thinking the same thing at Lions!

Found a small streach south of Lions that were hitting cranks in 5-6 fow, shoreline stuff. Nothing big, all 18ish or so.

P2 is running low! Even getting out of Lions. Go a little left or right of center channel going out. Dead center was chummin mud!

Good to see you out there too Jon!

Thanks for the heads-up on the Lion’s access.

nice fish guys….pitching bite was slow today it sounds? didn’t get out this weekend…maybe next wknd I can make it down again…wife will be in Boulder for a week…and the grass is brown so at least I don’t have to mow anymore.

JP

Like Jon said, be careful! The river is low, even caught me this weekend and took a chunk out of my prop (going on 6 years with that prop on the river, can’t complain!). Guess I’m not used to this low level after the last couple years. The Lion’s channel is very low, the channel to the river is staked now on the upstream side so stay on the downstream side coming and going. Watch those wingies! No more motoring over! Also, the downstream launch is a bit blown out, this may be a consideration depending on your trailer.

I would avoid the downstream launch…that first step is a doosy.

jp

My fav backchannel just south of the old toll bridge on the west side used to be 15 deep max with a low of 5 feet. After a few years of intense floods its maybe 5 feet max from all the silt, sand and muck pulled back down with the water. To me its really a sad thing especially since my boat is parked at a dock down there and I can’t even make it out to main channel to fish since its less than a foot in most areas back there now. We need a lil rain I’m thinkin before I can go out again… I was told they would re dredge the channel like they used to, but that was years ago. If they are worried about messing up the spawning, why not do it in fall.

They say keep it natural.. Wing damns sure aint natural..

Nice work Mike and Steve. I tried working wing dams mostly last night a for a couple hours before dark. Only fished 3 spots, but all held walleyes. They were only interested in crawlers though, not crank baits. Sure isn’t much flow down there now compared to two weeks ago when I was out last. Might need a little rain to get them back on the wing dams in better numbers and size. By the number of gulls on the main channel it appears the shad must be thick in the channel with the low water.

I would like to see a little more flow to. Better flow seems to push the fish into more predictable areas. Low flow lets them roam and feed as they want.

That might be why the trolling bite has been pretty good. Covering a lot of area instead of checking spots might be what you need to do if we don’t get some flow going.

joel