Pool 4 on 1-5-3

tough bite!…
for the first time during this coldwater period I did NOT catch a limit of keeping sized fish… in fact I boated only 2… and one of my other 2 partners boated 1 other.. the nicest fish of the day. a 19″ eye… (pic attached).. I guess we needed minnows…. or some of that new garlic scent…. or something I did not have.. tried cranks.. got nothing… did not try bucktail or sonars… but tried a wide variety of plastic… Super Doos were what we caught every keeper sized fish on…. though I tried shads, power baits, ring worms, even a twister or two…. I could not find enough of a pattern to even relate.. we fished deep, shallow, by the dam, down river…. rocks, sand, clams…. wing dams… gave it my best shot… came up pretty empty….. I heard that the day before was awesome…. guess we paid for that success today…..

I agree with the above post. The day started optimistic, a 16″ & a 17″ sauger on the first drift near the dam & downhill from there caught fish on ringworms and dos. Fast actind below the Y but nothing over 12″. Ended up with 6 nice fish…two guys 4 hrs.

RiverEyes,

I do have to say, yesterday was pretty much the same as your report until around noon. We fished pretty much like you did, jigs, plastics, and ect. After not having any success with that, we started pulling 3 ways with small stick baits, and even a phelps floater/half crawler, and all that changed. We had steady action all through the afternoon. Several really nice sauger, a couple decent eyes. We fished extra slow, almost at a standstill, just enough to keep it headed upriver. The best action was in 13 to 15 feet of water. We ended the day by boating about 25 keeper fish, with the biggest at 23 inches. We kept only enough for a meal apiece, but could have had a couple of nice limits. Sorry to hear the bite turned on you, but like they say, “that’s fishin’ “
Hope the weather holds so we can continue to boat fish…..

TBO/MN,

Which worked better in this cold water, pulling small pulgs or the floaters?

Dave Gulczinski

Seemed as though the floater was getting hit quite often, and not hooking up, but the little sticks were getting the hook ups. We took fish on both sticks, and floaters. We ran 4 rods, 3 with sticks, and one with a floater……..all caught fish. If I were to do it over, probably all 4 would have stick baits. It is fun to try different things, and we didn’t think that the floater and crawler would work, but tried it anyway….and it did.

Hi TBO…

wish you had been out there to instruct us.. we DID try pulling sticks.. in fact the smallest ones we had… maybe i was trolling too fast though.. I was making perceptable headway against the current… maybe I should have dialed it down a notch or 2 and zig zagged a bit more… I really wasnt sure WHERE to pull the baits.. so I was kind of out of luck.. when your moving dead slow you got to have location dialed in.. and I didnt!…. colors I used on the cranks were hot perch, blue/silver, black/gold.. on a baby thunderstick, husky jr, and a regular floatin rap… we had a variety of baits and styles and colors all down at the same time.. not one bite…. I kept speed pretty constant with only a slight zig zag… guess I should have changed speeds more…

apparentIy I need some lessons in finesse fishing….. maybe a whole series of them!… heres a picture of the only boat I saw that was doing much of anything Saturday… hmmmm who is that in the front of that boat?….. why its DUSTIN!!… kind of figures huh?

I am sure that you were doing what was needed, and yet on some days nothing works. We did zig zag back and forth through the 13-15 foot water, seems that was the only productive area. I do think the speed was very important. Like I said earlier, “thats fishin’ “

See ya on the water……………….

tbo,
Sounds like you made the right adjustments to put fish in the boat. I had to leave early on Saturday, how did you do after we talked?
See ya on the water, Don

Ken,

Wish I new you were going to take a pic I would have smiled for ya’ or maybe gave you a wave.

Don’t be so hard on yourself about not getting bit on 3-ways and cranks. I did the same thing in the am hrs with out a legal fish to show for my efforts. The early morning was ok for my boat with a couple of decent walleyes pitching jigs and ring worms, purple was the best color in the early am. Best walleye for the day came on a pink ring worm.

In the mid morning it pretty much died off for us, I had tried everything in my power to get fish to go in certain locations with no success at about 1:00 we headed in to Everts and got some minnows, yep you heard me right, I said “minnows” fat heads that is. Steve looked at me and said that bad huh? I said yes it was tough goin out there!

I re-rigged all of my guys rods with 1/16oz jigs and kept the boat in 12’to 15′ of water, it was all up hill from there. We ended the day with a real nice bag of fish for 3 guys. Out of all the legals we had 15 of them were walleye.

What had started to turn in to a nightmare around mid morning turned in to a sweet dream come late afternoon!

This was the first trip all fall/winter I’ve had to use bait to put decent fish in the boat. I guess it just goes to show everything has a time and place. On Sunday minnows just happened to be the right bait.

hey Dustin… sorry about the clandestine pix!.. was just trying out my 6x zoom… you were on the other side of the river from me!…. I took that pic the same time I took the pix of only decent eye we had…… I noticed you were almost in line with my shot!… so I snapped a pic of you too!….
it was cool to see you producing fish on a tough bite day….. sure taught me a lesson…… there isnt any one thing that produces all the time….. you have to figure out what they want… ! your guys got their moneys worth with you. thats for sure… that was one tough bite…. the guys I was with said it was the toughest day they ever had down there…..

I think it’s a pretty cool pic! It was really nice out on Sunday but in your picture it looks really cold.

Thanks for taking the snap shot.

yea it WAS a cool shot.. it was snowing when I shot it!! it dont get cooler than that does it? funny how we can consider anything near 30 with not TOO much wind a nice day!! glad you liked the pic… Im always happy to get pix of our guys out on the water doing what they love….

Right after we talked to you, we went to pulling sticks on 3 ways. That proved out to be the “day saver”. Like you, we hunted for fish, but found very little action.

One of the lessons I learned and liked the best was that even if the fishing is tough you dont have to fish deep to score…. the fish were still sitting in 13-16′ of water and still could be caught..this is a good point for everyone to remember… you dont have to sit in the scour hole killing more fish than you keep… there are good numbers of nice fish to be had shallower… and in that shallower water you have a chance at a trophy… I dont think Im going out on much of a limb when I say I dont think there are many (if ANY!) big fish in that DEEP water…..

I know from about this time on through the end of February the bite on pool 4 will be fairly tough….. maybe fishing this shallower water with finesse tactics will be the best bite for everyone dont be afraid to give it a try, a good starting point is any 13-16 foot water from the Y up to the dam……….. on any given day they may be using any of that area… or all of it…

One other note..for some reason pool 2 from now until right around March (normally)… is very very good…. and a great place to try for some REAL nice fish… including excellent chances at both trophy walleye and sauger…..