Change is surely in the air and in the water this weekend on the Mississippi River. What change do you ask? Changing of the seasons. Fall is setting in and so far it seems to be having some positive effects the on river fishing.
Sunday morning Jason P and I decided to hit pool 2 early. Was hoping to get on a few spots and maybe some fast action as the fish where pushing bait up on the shorelines. This didnt work out as well as expected but did manage a few walleyes and got into a school of feeding white bass. Casting a shallow crank bait took most of these early fish. Wasn’t the numbers I was hoping for the early morning bite but still not a bad start to the day.
Down river we went next to start jumping spots to see what we could find. It didnt take long to see that the crank bait bite that took most of our early fish had faded and it was now time for jigs and bait. As I was working areas over with a crank bait Jason was following up with bait and picking up the fish I had left behind. A few fish off of this spot and it was time to move on again as there was still more spots I wanted to do some checking on.
The morning continued on with jumping spots here and there. Some held a few fish. Others not so good. A couple of my old reliable areas from the last month held no fish but made up for that with finding three nice walleyes on the tip of a wing dam I hadnt fished in a long time. Later on we got on a trolling run that I have just started to play around with. This run kicked out a couple of small walleyes and three nice pike. Commented on maybe having to bring back some old school spoons for these guys in the future. Not a bad morning but it was time to start heading back up river.
On the way back up river our plan was to get back on some fish we had found earlier. That didn’t work to well as the wind had picked up pretty good in this area. The back up plan was to get back on the tips of some wing dams to see what was going. My last trip out this approach was pretty slow. Thinking this lull had something to do with the cold front coming threw last week but knowing river fish these effects usually dont last to long. It didnt take long to see the walleye where back feeding again. Here again a few casts with crank baits produced nothing but following up with a jig and crawler quickly put fish in the boat. The first couple of dams kicked out just a couple of fish each but the next one we ended up with a half dozen off of. Sure hope this trend continues and we start seeing more fish actively feeding on the wing dams.
Our approach on the dams hasn’t really changed a whole lot from the last month or so. Jig size bounced around a little on Sunday depending on the dam and wind speed at that time. We used a variety of H20 jigs from 1/8 to 1/4 in size. Matched this up with a half or third of crawler threaded on the hook. We worked these jigs down the front face of the dams and off the tips many times almost right back to the boat before the fish would hit. Did notice a few more solid strikes out of the fish this trip as compared to slurping up of the baits just a week ago. Kinda has me thinking these fish are starting to put the fall feed bag on and with any luck maybe hair jigs and plastics will start to get more productive here in the near future.
Average fish size was still holding about the same for Sundays trip. Lots of fish in that fun 18 to 20″ size range with maybe a hand full running over 20″s. Our biggest 2 or 3 where in that 23 to 24″ range. Figured we caught 20 to 25 walleyes and a fair amount of other fish to keep us happy for the day. Even found another sunfish pitching the face of one wing dam. That’s not a common accurance we see to often up here on pool 2.
Good luck to those that are getting out. With the cooler temps in the air right now and the bite being pretty decent I think my trips to pool 2 will be more common. Looking forward to another great fall of fishing on the river.
