Hi all,
I asked for help a few days ago and said I would post how I do. Well, I didn’t do very well, but I spent the day with a great family, and a good time was had by all even though the fish didn’t really join in the party. Fishing is a great way to make friends.
Since I hadn’t been out in about 8 weeks and I wasn’t able to find much in the way of recent reports on pool 4 I was really starting from scratch so I decided to keep changing things up until I figured something out. Maybe I changed too much – it’s hard to know, I guess.
We started about 1:00 at Deer Island. We started 10-12 feet and made 3 passes – each one gradually deeper out to 16 feet with only sheephead to show for it. Tried JSR in every color I had along with some Grappler shads.
Went to the Watermans area – nothing. Went to the Wisconsin side across from Hansons harbor all the way up to the Rush River – nothing. At one point during our troll along the Wisconsin rip-rap the water was literally boiling with shad over a huge area – I’ve never seen that much baitfish in the water in my life. It was made very clear just how much competition we had running up against our offering.
At about 5 p.m. we came back and trolled the rip rap north of Hok-Si-La. This was to be our last trolling run as it was about time for my guests to go home. Sure enough, after 4 hours on the water we started connecting with eater sized sauger in 12-13 feet using JSR’s in Firetiger at 3 mph.
Not much of a report, but maybe it’ll save you a few hours of searching. Unfortunately, I spent most of our time today much deeper than 12 feet – my mistake. I think if we had been able to stay we might have been able to put a nice stringer together for the table. The kids caught them while adding a slight pumping action to the rod. The extra change in speed might just have been the ticket.
Thanks to everyone who helped me out. Hopefully this helps one of you a little.
Take care,
Scott