Trolled Leadcore this Morning near Stockholm…

Trolled shorelines from Stockholm to Pepin this morning. A little windy but doable. Caught 20 saugers–fairly decent size…biggest was 17.5 inches. The pike were on a tear also. They were easy to spot–water wolves lurking 5 to 7 feet off the bottom and then BAM! No big gators, but fun to catch. Leadcore ruled surpreme! Blue and natural jointed colors were my best ones. Water temp was 58. The eating fish seemed to be in the 15 to 18 foot depth. Get out there!

When you say “Natural”, which colors were productive. I’m presuming perch and shad. Did FT do anything??

Were the walleye biters suspended or on bottom??

Stu –

Yep, the Natural colors were mostly shad colors. I also used the crawfish patterns…which are just shades of browns with reds or oranges thrown in. #7’s were the ticket, which I thought were maybe too big, but they hammered them.

Walleyes–did not catch a single one! In hindsight, I was probably fishing too deep to catch walleyes.

Were the fish suspended over 15/18 or down 15/18 in deeper water???

Saugers…bottom banging the cranks for those critters in that 15 to 18 fow.

It was REALLY cool to see the bigger pike off the bottom on the sonar…big arches.

REALLY REALLY cool to watch them on the side imaging (SI) and see the shadows. It’s pretty obvious using SI when the fish are belly to bottom or up a ways. The SI showed a fleet of submarines down there! Love the Bird!

I did some leadcore trolling around the Pepin, WI area on Sunday afternoon and managed to box a few eaters but a lot more dinks than keepers. Caught most of my fish a little deeper 16-23′ and the larger fish were caught on Wally Divers in blue shad pattern. We did catch a few pike, up to about 26″ but no walleye and nothing shallower than 15′. Dragged some crawlers too but again a few small fish and some goats so it was back to trolling. Lots of debris fouling up the baits though. We kept changing baits from Shad Raps to glass shad raps to flicker shads to wally divers just to see what they would bite. Not many folks out.

Dave

I DR trolled Sunday afternoon also and had similar experiences. I trolled out of Pepin Harbor up past Second Can and Bogus Point up to Sand Point.

Lots of shakers and nothing worth keeping. No northerns. Marked a few good fish, but nothing taking.

Ran a lot of shads and sticks, but nothing special.

If there was a common thread, it was BLUE with an ORANGE belly. Don’t know what the bait fish is, but all strikes came on that combo.

we found our fish deeper, over 25′ generally. They came off of bottom lures and belly lures.

I’m trying farther up on Friday with RiverWeed.

With the DRs we did NOT have weeding problems.