red wing dam bite

Was a tough bite at the dam yesterday. Caught a few sauger and walleye up there on a jig and minnow. My father caught one on a ringworm. Tried sonars with no hits on those. Most of the fish were not very aggressive. After the weather changed to windy and light rain we moved down to the back channel and picked up a couple decent eyes. One 19 and 16″ er. A couple smaller than 15 made it to the boat also. The west wind made it near impossible to fish the part of the back channel we were on so we called it a day. There were a few fish back there still. Hopefully somebody catches some fish today with the wonderful weather we are having today.

It was a tough bite for me in the morning. I only had a few hours to fish, so I stayed pretty close to Everts. I started pitching cranks to rip rap, then changed over to jigging after the sun was up. I didn’t buy any minnows and it appeared the bite was more consistent for the guys using meat. I had my best success on hair jigs. It was a beautiful day to be out. Can’t wait for a couple more weeks when the bite really turns on.

Fished from Everts on Oct. 21 to 23. Started out spending some time anchored at the dam, doing what the rest of the world was doing,( jigging blade baits). but I cant sit still that long, even though we were getting a good number of fish, most small. so after about an hour of that each day, we started the controlled drift vertical jigging, with jig/minnow and jig/plastic combo, and caught all of our nicer fish doing this. Several 18 to fat 20 inch walleye taken by this method each day, and some smaller ones as well. Mostly in 10 to 12 fow, starting at the end of all the anchored boats, on the Wisconsin side. Managed to pick up a fish or two on most drifts, with no traffic to work around. wind made it tough, though, and had to use the Minnkota to work our way downstream.