Red Wing Report from Thursday.

Got to spend the afternoon fishing pool 4 yesterday. Temps in the low 40s yesterday where fantastic. The wind wasnt to bad and as it neared dark the rain set in. Still hard not to enjoy a afternoon of open water fishing in January.

As usual Steve at Everts had the ramps in great shape and was very helpful with a few quick pointers on what to try and where to look for fish. Very easy to get the boat in and out just make sure to drain those trailers before pulling up the ramp.

First stop for me was vertical jigging below the Y. Started out kinda slow but towards the end of the drift picked up about a dozen saugers. Nothing real big but was still happy just to get some bites. Firecracker/Chartruese tail Moxies seemed to be the ticket but then again fishing alone I didnt really spend much time trying different baits. The typical nice steady holding of the jig right off the bottom was the ticket.

Moved up by the dam next and didnt take long to find more of the same. Active smaller saugers hitting plastics. Decided to hide out on a shoreline there out of the wind a little and just have fun with these fish until later towards evening. As it got closer towards dark a few walleyes started showing up in the mix and so did the rain. It was time to put the rain coat on and make a move to try and target some of these eyes moving up shallow to feed.

Ended up spending about the last hour of my day dragging lighter jigs in the shallows looking for walleyes. That bite paid off pretty well. Picked up 4 walleyes on the 1st pass with a fish here and there after that. Even though the fishing was fun after about a hour of sitting in the rain it was time to head in.

Managed to catch a couple dozen fish for a quick afternoon trip yesterday. Nothing real big but that was all right with me. It was great just to get back in the boat again. A much needed break from having to stand on ice.

Only thing missing in that report was…ME!

You and everyone else I had sent a message to about fishing yesterday. You know work happens every day. 40 degrees in January only once and a while.

Rub in in good will ya Mike.

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Only thing missing in that report was…ME!

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You were missing from Duggies last night too… Did you go back to Gren Bay thinking the Packers were at home again this weekend?

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You and everyone else I had sent a message to about fishing yesterday. You know work happens every day. 40 degrees in January only once and a while.

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It sounds like you had a good trip!

I got your message at 8 PM last night (forgot my phone at home). You are correct, 40 in January only happens every so often. However, there is a long season ahead for most fishermen and so few vacation (or sick ) days. Especially for those of us that can’t set our own schedule the majority of the time.

That was a good day Mike–just like any day on the water–hard or sort– is a good day!

I also spend Thursday on the river taking advantage of the nice weather. We started out below the Y and found fishing slow. A bump here and there and an occassional small sauger. After an hour we headed up to the dam and had a fairly good day fishing. Nothing fast and furious, but we did manage to find enough biters to keep the gloves off.

I mainly fished firecracker paddle tails, my buddy went through a scoop of minnows. I did try other colors and had I had some action on superdoos. But every time I switch back to the paddletail my catch rate increased.

Sometimes its the little things that make the difference. I sometimes forget to waypoint fish. Thursday I way pointed the first fish and that made all the difference. The active fish seemed to bit best on the upside of the scour hole and tended to be very location specific. We didnt get many fish on the flats or anything below 25 ft, I liked that as I really dont like to go deeper in order to minimize release recovery. As soon as we got on the flat our catch rate declined.

This was a great piece of learning for me, on a slow bite day we knew where the catchable fish were and really focused on the subtle bite. For anglers who might not have the ability to waypoint fish on their locator I would highly recommend purchasing the Lakemaster application for their smartphones. This feature provides the same capabilities and is not very expensive to purchase.

It was great to catch some fish, spend time with a good buddy and learn a few new tricks.

I was fishing there Tuesday and Wednesday and started out Tuesday jigging and for the most part just were getting all short saugers. I switched gears and went to lead and then started to pick up quality fish. Walleyes prefered the leadcore and also limited the amout of shorts as well. Keep changing until you find something the nice fish want. Of course there are some days when I can’t get anything to go no matter what I try. Fun couple of days. Wish it would warm up a little again. I was a little surprized that it appeared I was the only one pulling leadcore. One guy from Iowa did ask as I went by if I was pulling minnows behind the boat.

Mojo, what speed were you running when fishing with the leadcore and were you catching fish mostly up/down/cross? Lately I have had better luck trolling cross current and up stream with few to none going with the current. Usually I run between 1 and 1.5 mph up/cross current and a bit faster down. A lot of the time now I will troll up/cross current and verticle jig back down. You won’t see many people trolling this time of year. I think many people believe it does not work in the winter.

I was running 1.4 into the current and about 1.9-2.1 with the current. Got fish going both up and back it didn’t really matter it seemed about the same on average. I got a few turning around but never thought of trolling cross current. I will try a little of that next time.

Sorry I missed you guys out there Fred. Did you guys stick around to fish in the rain? Hate to say but the rain was kinda pleasant at first. After about a hour I figured I better hit the road incase the temps dropped.