Pool 2 report 6-3-06

Spent the day on pool 2, ended up with 21,23,23,27,27,and a 18 inch sauger, not gang busters but a couple of big girls.I fished wingdams all day,Icaught fish on 3-ways,jigs, and casting cranks, cranks were good in the morning but seemed to taper off in the afternoon. I was using deep diving bass crankbaits, they were the only ones I had that would get down.Water temp. 75. P.S. no pics I was setting up for a self timed picture and bumped the camera into the splash well.

Sounds like yesterday was a good day to be on Pool 2? My wife and I went and we caught 13 fish from 12-26″ trolling cranks. The jointed Grappler Shad was the best lure for us! Rocky and I will be down there today dodging pleasure boats.

Bummer about the camera. I donated a camera to the well once. Also a pair of brand new Oakley’s and fishing rod when I was little.

I should start diving, I bet there are some nice things at bottom of our lakes and rivers.

P.S. If anyone find my Oakleys, shoot me an e-mail.

Our boat had 18 fish for the day and the biggest was 29″. What a hog!!! Will try and get some pics up in a little while but anyways the rest of the fish were the typical 18-24 inchers. What a great day to be down there.

Sounds like the fish are cooperating! Congrats to all, nice fish. A question for everyone, any presentation working better for you than others?

8/0 octopus and 7″ bully got me to #8…. 2 to go Steve!!
Cranks also were working for numbers but nothing big.

Marty V and I had some luck Saturday with cranks. Firetiger pattern in grappler shad caught most for Marty with a jointed shad rap in firetiger picking up one for me.

dd

Fished the river this morning. Taking the advice for IDA reports I decided to take a more aggressive approach looking at taking the active fish off the top of wingdams.No fish on top, move on. Using bombers (5 and 6) in crayfish or yellow I ended up with 10 fish total, the lastest was 6 pounds, got several 5 and 4 pound fish as well as silvers and a bonus smallmouth.

One thing I did differently was to work more horizontally, throwing the baits at more of a 45 degree angle along the front of the winddam. I believe this was a piece of advice Steve D offered several weeks ago. This approacah let me keep the lure in the “fish zone” longer and with the wind let me make shorter casts without loosing effectiveness.

Wingdam fishing with cranks is so much fun and for those of you how havent experienced this now is the time. The walleyes I caught today are really putting on weight and much chunkier then those I caught a couple of weeks ago The river is down and the fish seem willing!

No presentation shined over the others but when they were smacking cranks what a hoot, had just caught a 23 and casted the crank back to the same place and I got hit so hard it nearly ripped the pole out of my hands and immediately snapped the line, these fish hit crank baits like a freight train. I will have someone with me this weekend and we will have two cameras.

Sounds like you guys are finding some nice fish. My luck lately on big fish has been pretty poor. Spent three hours on wingdams this morning and did nothing but donated tackle. Chuck Dubie jumped in the boat a little after noon and we headed down river to some back water areas to try the trolling. Picked up quite a few fish trolling crankbaits in the backwaters but just not much for size. Alot of cookie cutter fish from 18″ to 20″. You know you are on pool 2 when 20″ walleyes get hoisted into the boat. Also had a few up to 22″
Stopped at a couple of places on the way back up river and caught a few more cookie fish. Last fish of the day was a nicer 23″er that came off a wingdam with some high current on it. What a blast.
Only managed 3 fish on wingdams today. Spent a fair amount of time pitching live bait rigs with leachs to the dam. This is a new aproach for me on pool 2 and its good to expand ones bag of tricks for river fishing. The 23″ walleye I caught clobbered a leach at the end of the day. It might as well had been 10#s as i was very excited and happy to catch a fish on a new technic.
No big fish today but still a very good day on pool 2.

Go away Mack. We are talking about fish that have evolved anough to grow teeth.

Thanks for the update Mike. I hope to make it out tonight for a while working wingdams. I have not tried 3-ways with willowcats on pool 2 yet, but I hope to soon. Glad to hear you caught a better fish on a different technique.

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Go away Mack. We are talking about fish that have evolved anough to grow teeth.

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Sorry Mack but that was a good one Mike

Does tht mean you have a source for willow cats in the metro area? Im looking into hitting the backwaters and sloughs north of town looking for them pretty soon.

The best presentation for me over the weekend was definately not my first choice, but the waves from pleasure boats on Saturday and strong south winds on Sunday forced me into the backwater trolling pattern that I was trying to avoid….little did I know that was EXACTLY where I should have been all along! I immedialtely connected on a 24″ fish and thought it was a fluke, but after catching close to 40 fish this weekend I know it was no fluke!

Middle of the day was best, used jointed grappler shads (color made little difference!), and trolled up and downstream. The ratio of fish caught going upstream was probably 4:1 and I credit that to being able to control the speed better into the current….they definately preferred a slow troll. Also, was surprised to catch my largest sauger ever on Pool 2…right around the 4# mark!!! Rocky and I caught a couple we took the time to photo, but with our Foxmasters Tounament this weekend, I’m not sure he’ll have time to post them? Good luck to all who give this presentation a try. It’s not as fun as casting to wingies, but it sure has been productive!

Mike, I wish a bait shop had them close to the city. Probably have to get some down at Red wing.

Would small bullheads 2 1/2-3 1/2″ long work just as good??? I have been catching a ton of small guys like that and saved a few the other day to try using the same you would willowcats!

sure would!….

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Would small bullheads 2 1/2-3 1/2″ long work just as good??? I have been catching a ton of small guys like that and saved a few the other day to try using the same you would willowcats!

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You can catch some fish on them but they don’t work anywhere near as good as a willowcat. Trust me. As a guy that has gone thru 100+ dozen willowcats in the last couple weeks along with Dustin on guide trips… the bullheads we get in the tanks don’t get the bites as often. We honestly want them to work so we try them frequently with poor to fair results when the fish are just ballistic on willowcats. A typical happening is for one of my guide customers to go cold while his buddies are consistantly catching fish only to find he’s fishing a bullhead instead of a cat. A quick switch-out to a cat and he’s back in the game.

The amount of money and time I could save if bullies worked like willowcats is staggering.

O.K., who has a picture of a “willow cat”??? I’ve been hearing so much about these things for years it’s surprising I don’t know what one looks like…..kinda like when I was younger, but that’s a different story! So, who has a picture….of the willow cat, that is?

Tell ya what… I’ll shoot a couple pics tomorrow on the water and post them here.

Thank You, kind sir!

Correction… my guide trip tomorrow included a couple of wee-tykes. I just got off the phone with “dad” and we’ve decided to reschedule to avoid the rain. So… no willowcat pics tomorrow but I’ll get some over the weekend, maybe even some video, and I’ll post it up.

Search the web for tadpole madtom and you should come up with some pictures. For some reason people also like willow cats for there aquariums. Wonder how much they seel them for at the pet store?

Madtom

Thanks Kooty, now I know!!!