Pool 14

spent the last several days fishing pool 14 from albany on down to princeton and did pretty good. started fishing on friday and trolled a gold #7 suspending shadrap for about two hours and caught my limit of 16″ to 19″ fish. caught most of the fish on a bumpy flat and the rest on wingdams. saturday the fishing was bit harder and only managed three keepers, some trolling some working dubuque rigs on the wingdams. caught lots of short fish. sunday only caught two keepers, but released a 25″ and a 27″ walleye trolling a #7 jointed firetiger shadrap on the albany flats. also lots of short fish came off the ends of wingdams using dubuque rigs. monday a buddy and i caught two limits in about 5 hours of fishing all trolling bombers on wingdams. all our wingdam fish came off the ends in about 10-13 fow. color and size of crankbait didn’t really seem to matter as long as you were ticking and/or banging bottom. all in all a great four days of fishing. the fishery is alive and well on pool 14. sorry no pics to speak of. most of the time it was threatening to rain or was raining so i left the camera in the truck.

Great to hear you had good luck. I was out in the same general area on Tuesday and did not have the same luck. I caught a few short walleyes and a lot of gar. I am not sure what you mean by the Albany flats? Any information that you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks and have a great day.

the area on the ILL. side of the river right up from the bunge depot just north of albany. the downriver portion starts about where the power lines cross the river and continues upstream to the opening of cattail slough. it is basically a large clambed. a lot of people will troll upstream using cranks zig-zagging out to the channel edge and into 4-5 FOW and back out to the channel then drift back using jigs and crawlers/leeches. i caught both of my bigger fish trolling upstream and down. i didn’t drift fish, but i saw lots of others catching fish with this technique. i happened to be trolling by a boat that was drifting and watched them boat a nice mid twenties fish, probably 24-25″. unless things have changed drastically since i left, the bite should still be going well. hope that helps.

Thanks

More like… I left the camera in the pickup, because I didn’t want to take a picture of Jim’s $20 fish?

I found good numbers of legal fish in several areas on 7/6, mid-morning until mid-afternoon. Some nice fish on the clam beds riverking mentioned near Albany, but our best numbers where in areas with sand dunes ranging from 6-8′. Trolled cranks over them and did quite well, with several fish in the 18-22″ range.

I have had the same luck on wings, mostly short fish, with an occasional legal or “over” fish in the mix. Casting cranks to wing dam tops early and late has been a bit more productive for me of late, but not terribly consistent.

Thanks for the report riverking! Got me out and on the water. I have been struggling to find the time of late, but you gave me the push I needed to hit her for a couple days!

Ya Gee thanks Riverking (I think)

John help me out understanding where the sand dunes are located. I was not aware that we had sand dunes in the Mississippi!

All the help I can get in locating the walleye is appreciated.

Thanks

What I call “dunes” are areas with sandy bottom and rolling depth levels. Not sharp drops, but smooth like a sand dune. Some areas where originally wing dams that have been covered with sand years ago, others on outside bends where barges kick sand up toward the edge of the channel and it settles off the channel, and some are on inside bends, or below a series of wing dams.
John

Dunes in the river are pretty much like dunes on land just that the moving water creates the dunes in the river instead of the wind. Lots of the channel bottom is duned up here in pool 12. You can easily see it on a locator because it looks like waves across the bottom. In low flow (late summer/early fall) these dunes can be great places to find walleyes but it usually means lots of area to cover. I like to find the edges of the channel right next to a dune field and concentrate on that.

Eyehunter