Pool 4 10/18 thru 10/20

I know this is late but I am finally getting around to posting about my fishing from last weekend. I went down Thursday afternoon and fished through the end of Saugerama on Saturday. All I can say for sure is that the Fall bite is starting to take shape but it varies daily due to water temperature and flow. Thursday I started out 3 waying cranks and had zero success. I never went downstream from Evert’s in 3 days of fishing so all my information is up by the dam. There were posts before Saugerama about where to look for fish but in my mind with the low flow and low water I knew before my boat hit the water that I would be up by the dam. In normal flow years when Hay Creek and the Vermillion have decent flow then it takes some looking but with the low water this year the fish will be scattered throughout the river. My thoughts were that even if I found fish downstream the odds of them sticking around with no flow wasn’t good and they might not be there tournament day. I knew if I found fish at the dam they would stay there—even if I couldn’t get them to bite. I finished the day Thursday getting several keeper size fish on hairjigs and minnows. Friday was a full day off fishing with the boy joining me and running the show. We had some success on plastics but the hair and minnow bite was still about the best thing going. The boy found one hair jig color that seemed to trigger keepers and he was up most of the night tying up more. Saturday the hair bite seemed to fade some but I had better luck on plastics than I had the previous two days. My old favorite chart/pepper paddletail put some keepers in the boat but not the ones we needed. We had 6 decent saugers in the livewell at weigh-in time and had to throw a couple 13 inchers in the bag. I knew we were light and sure enough we ended up in 9th place. It was a great time—Eric always puts on a well run fun tournament. Congratulations to Dean and Eric for their win—they deserved it I think the next few weeks is going to see a good if not great Pool 4 bite develop. I launched out of Evert’s every day and I am so very proud to say that the resort is back to being run like a resort should be. Kari even kept BK in line and everyone knows what a job that is. Hope to see everyone on the water soon.

Nice report Rich.

We ended up trolling from Everts to darn near PnP on Friday. We found willing fish in transition areas instead of the usual go to holding areas. I had a choice on Saturday between going South to a spot that had some 16-18″ fish on it or going to a spot that was producing a fish or 3 every pass though we had to weed through the little guys to get some good ones going. We did pull a 5+lb eye on Friday prefishing and one good one Saturday, other than that we never caught anything else but sauger pre-fishing just didnt see any of the big ones yet.

Good seeing you Rich and hopefully we’ll see you around the resort in the weeks ahead

We also prefished friday and I worked everything from the damn down to the head of the lake. We opted to fish up by the damn and it somewhat paid off for us as we took 7th. Hair jigs and minnows worked best for us as well. We missed a lot of fish and I mean a lot. We had a hard time breaking that 13.5in fish as well but managed to get a couple nicer ones. It was a great tourny eric and I plan on fishing it next year. thanks a bunch.

The fog made for a Hell of a boatride . Having not prefished at all we decided to go to the head of the lake and instantly started catching saugers in the 13 to 16 inch range in 14 to 18 feet of water vertical jiggin plastics and bait. After a while we decided to try to find some bigger saugers down stream. After an unsuccessfull venture we went back to where the fish were and ended up hooking a nice sauger that carried us into 4th place. When we went to weight the sauger it puked out a large 5 inch shad we were able to swap some 13 1/4 inch fish for 15 inchers and ended up doing well . The fish were biting short and light.

We also fished the head of the lake, vertical jigging hair and meat. It was my first tourny ever and my buddy and I had a blast. On takeoff we were wondering what the hell we got ourselves into with the fog but ended up catching 32 all together and scratched up an 8 fish limit from 13-16″. Thanks to Eric for all his hard work and I’m sure the $2,500 made for a good day!