I made it out on pool 12 at Dubuque on Friday morning and fished until noon. There were a good 20 plus boats fishing the tailwater area most of them over near the lock wall on the Iowa side. Not being one for crowds and bumper boats I stuck to the Wisconsin side of the river. The Corps had moved the rollers to the winter position with the water coming over the tops of the rollers so the current on the sides was way down from my last trip out. After about an hour of searching I got into a drift pattern where I started near the middle of the river just off of the heaviest current flow. The current and wind steered my controlled drifts towards the Wisconsin shoreline. I was starting in around 20 ft of water and the water became shallower to around 12 to 15 ft on each drift. I was vertical jigging a 5/16 oz black jig head with a 4″ purple twister and a stinger hook. I caught somewhere around 25 to 30 short saugers and a couple walleyes but none bigger than around 14 inches. I spent the last hour trying a few areas downstream with no success. I could have kept my limit of 13″ saugers but I was hoping for some bigger ones. I did see one boat catch an 18 inch sauger and a 17 inch walleye but most everybody else was catching only little fish. There was still a little too-much grass floating down for pulling raps but it wasn’t bad for vertical jigging. The fish are not deep yet with most fish caught in less than 20 feet of water. The bigger fish have not yet moved in or are hiding somewhere where nobody has yet found them. The tailwaters in pools 12, 13 & 14 will close on December 1st and won’t open again until March 16th. I guess I’ll be fishing downstream or heading upstream to Guttenburg or Lynxville my next time out.
Eyehunter
