5/19/03 Pool 4 Report by Dustin Stewart

Pool 4 report.

Pictured here from right to left is Terry Halderson, Steve Erickson and John Flaherty, with a nice bunch of eaters.

Here is John with one of the nice smallmouth he caught on a tube jig.

Terry had the hot hand, this is one of the 18″ bass he had come to the boat.

Here is a picture of Carl Peterson with another nice pool 4 walleye we brought ot the boat on Sunday.

This is Brent Peterson with one of those “not so golden fish”

James Holst and Steve Vick made it out with me chasing bass one evening last week. This is a double that Steve and I tied in to once we found an active school.

One last one of me sleeping while I was waiting fot Holst to take the picture

The River has a lot of debris floating in it and is really rolling along, keep your eye’s peeled for debris as it is really thick in some area and makes navigation next to impossible unless at idle speeds. The clarity is still pretty good for the river levels. The water was suppose to be on the down fall but with all the rain we received up North today expect it to even get higher in the next week.

oh yea this too

you ~da~ Man Dustin !!

thanks for the excellent reports !!!

Good report buddy!
I see you got some “real” time on your hands to do what you love to do best….Me too now!
Congrats and nice report!

Dustin,
thanks for the stellar guiding you provided that day. The walleye bite you had tuned into that afternoon was fast and furious. Made our whole get together as things were slow for us the rest of the weekend. Really a fun day!

hey dustin, great report!

would you care to explain exactly how you can tell if those shad raps aren’t trimed right. to say i don’t troll much would be an understatement (i just don’t find it to be as fun a way to catch fish ), but i would like to know because i do buy my share for casting along shorelines, ect. i’ve never really noticed any big problems with any i’ve gotten.

I agree regarding the new #5 Shad Raps. Did not want to tell anyone, as I thought I was doing a poor job of tuning them….so kept adding the “untunables” to the “do not use pile…..”. Would be curious to find out if the retaler you purchased them from honors the return….or, if a contact to Rapala is in order. Any Rapala reps out there care to comment??

Over the past few years my son and I have had quite a few problems with Shad Raps, including lure breakage from fish hitting them. We have several we plan on returning to see if Rapala will replace them. On a related note because of the afore-mentioned we are using less Shad Raps and more Storm products.

I will get on this next week and let you all know what happens. Right now I am headed for the Mississippi and was wondering how the boat landings are on the Wisconsin side in the Maiden Rock/Pepin area.

Jake,

Good question. Run your bait off the side of the boat at the speed you will be trolling and slowly pull it forward, if it doesn’t run off to the right or left it is fine. Most baits will fool you in to thinking they are going ok but if it slides slightly off to one side it will make a major difference in the baits diving depth and creates a lot more line tangles when running 2 lines off one side of the boat. To get the bait back in tune take a pair of pliers, slightly bend the eye let of the bait the opposite way of which it is running.

If you are a shore angler you can do the same thing by just putting the bait in the water and making a forward sweeping motion.

Hope this helps.

A couple of years ago I sent Rapala about a dozen shallow diver Shad raps with broken lips. They sent me replacement baits, but they were all deep divers. I suggested that they beef up the lip on these shallow divers, apparently they are not going to do this and did not want to get any more broken lip returns from me. They did replace these baits with no questions asked and without receipts though.

I usually write an accompaning letter stating how I had become a avid user and was usually used to better quality. This usually gets some action.

When did rapala change the design on these… are you guys talking the shallow divers? I picked up a bunch this spring #5 deep divers and haven’t had a problem.. running true out to 3.5 mph at least… I must have got a good batch