Pool 14 Jig-athon

Walleyefarm invited me to join him on his boat Thursday evening on Pool 14, near Clinton, Iowa to try to show me a thing or two on how its supposed to be done. ‘Farm is a great guy and very knowledgeable angler; he’s welcome on my boat anytime.

As you can see, the net worked today. Not only that, but I won’t have to take the family to Long John’s tomorrow night!

We launched at 5:15 and fished til almost 9:15. The technique used was vertical jigging while drifting. ‘Farm outfished me 4:1, but he’s got this jigging thing down cold. The River was kind to me, giving up a nice eater and thus officially baptizing my new St. Croix Premier jigging set-up.

Jigs tipped with leeches were the ticket. I used a Gulp minnow grub on several passes, but to no avail. Gulp is good, but there are still times when live bait seem to have an edge. ‘Farm was getting so many hits with the leeches, I was getting hot. . We set-up for the next drift and I tipped the jig with a leech. On the next pass, I hit paydirt. They wanted to be fed leeches tonight.

Regards,

Joe Jiacinto

kornking

What a good night we had last night. You learned an important method last night. I am just glad you caught a fish last night. Maybe next time the luck would go the other way. You kno, I never seen a man quit so excited as you when your walleye was in the boat, i think you were so happy we could have left right then. you forgot to tell how we ended the night. Hope you had fun and this site is a good way to get connected with other anglers.

Shhh…I thought the ending was supposed to be a secret? It was something about critters with whiskers, tangled jigs, and strong current, right?

Regards,

Joe Jiacinto

KornKing,
It sounds like you have the walleye bug bad—-welcome to the club. It is great to hear about someone who has the love of fishing that finds this site. Hang on cause you will improve so rapidly at walleye catching if you follow the advice on here. Just remember knowledge is a weapon so use it cautiously and let those big gals go to make more walleye. It won’t be long till a walleye meal of “eaters” won’t be a problem. Take care and maybe we’ll meet up one day. Are you coming to the GTG?

I know I love this website and have improved my fishing greatly. I like it when we can get or tactics and hot spots together. I’m not much on fishing the Mississippi, but the more I learn the better it gets. I just want to say and know I’m feeling the bug too.

I’ve enjoyed reading the ongoing saga of walleye fishing on pool 14. I used to fish there quite a bit but unfortunatly was one of those guys with limited knowledge that hung out below the dam. Lately I’ve migrated to those ugly green fish that sort of live in the weeds. Well, after all of your reports I got excited to try some walleye fishing away from the dam. I armed myself with jigs, leaches, and crawlers and headed to a good looking rocky area early Thursday. Unfortunately, the minute I got there I saw some surface activity, I proceeded to chase schools of bass up and down the rocks until the storm hit. I ended up with 24 lm bass and 4 stripers. It was too fun to quit. Maybe I can use my leaches next time out.

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something about critters with whiskers, tangled jigs, and strong current, right?

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You drowned a bucket full of kittens?

hey i was going to tell everyone you fell inandafter you tangled our lines and come up with a catfish. Ha ha.

Maybe I will see you out tomorrow if not good luck, me and my uncle are going to fish a different area for a while and if nothing happens you might see us around. Just remember when you are drifting i just use the trolling motor to keep the line vertical. Good luck.

It’s great to hear you guys had a fun evening on the river! Jiggin’ up ‘eyes is a blast! Kornking, sounds like you found the perfect partner for a crash course on river jigging. I would say if you had to pick one technique to master first, it would be jig fishin the river. Way to go!
John

Hey Rooster, little does KornKing know that by skipping out early, he missed Beer-n-Bikinigirls day at work.

If I can get my trolling motor woes out of the way early tomorrow, I think I’m going to try to talk wifey into letting me hit pool 14 tomorrow afternoon. We’ll see what she says.

Gianni,
Might be a few bikinigirls on the river tommorrow if not too cold for them! Seriously, good luck if make it down. I’d suggest the wingdams above the Clinton gambling boat on Illinois side, or clam beds below the big bend in the river between Clinton and Albany. Wings around Albany have been pounded pretty hard of late, but may still be holding fish. I’ll be out tommmorow, but with a few other guys giving a tour of the pool.
John

If you see a blue-n-white bayliner fishing boat with a 50 mariner stop by and give a holler.

Well we got back about 11 and had 5 eyes and 7 gills. ROOSTER that worked to go smaller is jig size. Nice seeing you out there kornking hope you had good luck too

I got there about 3 and fished until about 7. I spent my time hitting the wingdams basically from L&D 13 downstream to just South of the casino. I didn’t get them all, but enough that I would’ve thought I’d find a walleye if that’s where they were spending their time.

Did find a pike, who rolled up boatside and proceeded to cut me off; a sheeper also thought the frenzy cranks were tasty. I had to quit using a slop rod after gut-hooking the ump-teenth bluegill; ended up keeping about ten of them, granny will appreciate that.

Should’ve taken some leeches, I suppose. Crawlers just seem like such a good summertime bait. When I realized I couldn’t get the bait to the bottom without having a gill whack it that it occurred to me that 14 doesn’t get much for safe ice, and people don’t haul out the panfish by the bucketload. Must be that leaves plenty of them to school on the wingdams come summertime. No complaints here though, fast panfish action beats the heck out of anything else I’d be doing. You never really know what the river’s going to throw at you. The last fish I caught was an 11-inch shad (a carp would have completed the junk-fish trifecta).

This was my first serious run-in with zeebs as well. One of the dams was just thicker-n-heck; it took me several minutes to knock them off my anchor when I was done.

Hey walleyefarm, glad to here that worked for ya! Sometimes it seems just 1/32 oz difference can make the difference with light hitters.
Gianni, sorry to here you did not connect with the walleyes. We had a tournament out of Albany, the Dubuque Walleye Club, and they were taking up quite a lot of the better wings early in the day. We managed to find fish on the wings solidly until about noon, then as the pleasure boat traffic picked up, we had to switch up and do some trolling backwaters and flats for fish.
I watched the weigh in for the Dubuque boys, winning weight was 17# and change for a 5 fish tourney limit. One 8lb 15oz fish for the winners. Several other limits over 12 lb. for 5 fish. I believe the big fish was taken from a wing dam, but not sure.
We found quite a few gills on the wing dams also. I thought it a little unusual with the current still so strong, but these fish just don’t ever seem to do what they are supposed to on this pool
John

The wing where I caught the most gills was very irregular, and I was fishing a seam where the current got really heavy due to a pocket in the dam. With a 1oz weight on a lindy rig, the line was still at >45 deg to the water. I would pick it up and let it drift back until I could feel the face of the dam and then pull in about a foot or two. I would guess the current was 7+ mph. Rarely could I get it back to the face of the dam without a gill crushing it.

Next time, I’ll bring the ultralight… maybe then I won’t be able to keep the 10lb walleyes off!

Fished from 6am-10:30am yesterday; put in @Albany on the IL side. Concentrated on the community walleye hole above the power lines, the wings across from the ramp on the Iowa side and downstream below the island on the Illinois side. Pulled some leadcore along the channel edges in 10′-15′ of water as well.

Saw ‘Farm in his boat and maybe Rooster? (were you in a boat with a pile of guys trollin’?)

I managed three small saugers and one white bass. One sauger was on the hometown clam bed and the others came off a wingie’, in the deeper water (15′) on the downstream side. The sauger’s hit a orange jig head with orange Gulp minnow grub. Also had one hit a green tail.

I tossed all the little guys back to grow bigger for another day.

Tournament? Ah, that explains all the commotion at the ramp and the bunch of boats tearin’ it up in the early morning sunrise. I was wondering what was going on…

Regards,

Joe Jiacinto

Yup, that was us KornKing. Sorry I did not see you out there! I was pretty tied up with being navigator for the day. We did quite a bit of fishing in a lot of different areas. Wings, clam beds, sloughs, and found some fish most everywhere we went. Nothing great, but we did find some nice 15-20″ fish. We also hit blue gills on the slacker water on the inside edge of a few wings, and quite a few white bass everywhere. All in all, a pretty good day for high skies and east winds day.
John