Fishing Downriver in Spring

I am all for avoiding the crowds and fishing down river in the spring. I am curious, however, how far downriver people have good success this time of year. For me, I have gotten into some good fish 7 or 8 miles below the dam, not much below that. I’ve fished very similar areas farther downriver and either catch very smallish fish, or nothing at all. I’d like to hear some other’s take on downstream success!

John:

I’ve caught ’em as far south as the wingdams across from the big sand bluff at the army depot on 13 in he spring.
Another pattern which seems to be pretty productive is targeting likely walleye spots downstream from tributary entry points. There are a couple of good wingdams downstream from the Maquoketa on the Iowa side which don’t hold fish all the time, but other times the fish are stacked–usually about April 1st. Of course, a lot depends on river flow.
Found similar patterns on downstream fish on pool 9. Just off the main channel at Victory is a good community spot, also Minnesota slough. running sloughs can also produce, especially with closing dams.
The tributary bite is pretty much overlooked on the Miss, ’cause everybody north of Dubuque likes to follow the flotilla up to the dams.
Probably 85 percent of the River’s walleye biomass follows the major flow upstream toward the dams…but 15 percent of the ‘eyes in any given pool is still a pile of fish. You would be AMAZED by the number of fish which take the “off ramps” on either side of the River, stacking below tribs, drain tubes and other points where the “flavor” of the river changes just a little bit from runoff.
Although 50 fish days are real nice, boating just a half-dozen good ones without playing bumper boats is sweet!
The Miss has always intimidated me when standing back and looking at the whole thing, trying to figure out where the fish are…but once I adopted the philosophy that it was a big biscuit, impossible to eat in one bite, and just started nibbling around the edges success on this awesome water certainly improved.

As soon as the ice is off the lake you’ll see me out there!

Great point TED! Thanks a heap!

(bumper boats… )

If you recognize the types of areas fish spawn in on the Mississippi River you will realize that there are spawning areas as far south as the next dam on many pools. Historically on Pool 9 the only time the numbers(percentage) of huge females are at the dam is when water levels are near flood(9′ on up)or very rising rapidly at any water level…. anytime the water goes up significantly on the Mississippi Walleye move up river . So that added to the instinct to spawn multiplies things. Otherwise they seem to be equally distributed in the first 12 miles of the pool in many(20+) locations. No doubt all of these locations have a much , much higher concentration of fish than any other time of the year with the possible exception of Clam bed areas. For twenty some years I was convinced all the big females ran to the dam to spawn and many do obviously, and some teelmetry studies have actually shown females actually going many pools north. The only difference is that in the last twenty I have found concentrations of spawners all the way down to Lansing.. and since I rarely fish below Lansing on this pool there may be many spots south of there to. I guess the one thing we don’t know about the 20 some areas is where those FEMALE fish were 2 weeks before and where they will be 3 weeks after the spawn is over.