Well, we spent approx 14 hours on the river this weekend in search of the tight lipped Walleye and Sauger. With little success. The Crappie however are as hungry as ever and willing to cooperate.
We worked many of the typical Walleye spots with a couple “smalls” and even fewer legal fish. In fact dragging lead in the main channel yielded one “legal” sauger (17″) and a number of smaller fish. We pulled up stakes and started searching around the river to the north. One of the traditional spots yielded a 16.5″ sauger and a couple other smalls. The crappie however. They were on. I found it unique trying to get my bait through the 10″-12.5″ crappie so I could catch a walleye or sauger.
The technique of the day was dragging jigs tipped with fatheads with the current at about 1.0 MPH. Other teams in the area did “OK” as well with some sort of dragging technique (live bait rigging, dragging jigs, cranks, etc). We found most of our fish in 7′-12′ of water adjacent to shallow areas where bait fish is holding. Watch for the seagulls to show you the way. On spot #2 there must be millions of shad on the shallow flats staging for their Northerly move. The water was popping all day long with shad. We were seeing water temps around 63 degrees all over the system. Come on cool water!
I hear the results from the Full Throttle on Sat and the Walleye Searchers tourney on Sunday were consistent with my results. I hear the top two places (Full Throttle) weighed 3 fish each. The #1 team at the Walleye Searchers weighed 4 fish. Those were the only 4 bites they got all day from what I understand.
I’m hearing the same from Louie as well. A guy better be ready to take advantage of the few bites they’ll get. If/when a person get’s a bite, chances are it’ll be a good fish and the only fish of the day.
