16 days and counting

March 16th is the day that the tailwater areas open back up for fishing on pools 12, 13 & 14 and I can’t wait.
Usually by that time the river is opened up and I hope that it will be this year as well. The warmer temps we have been seeing along with the predicted heavy rains here in eastern Iowa over the next couple days should make the river rise and break up all that ice. I heard this morning that we could see as much as 1-1/2″ or more of heavy rain here in the next 48 hours. There is a flood watch for this area. I hope we get the rain as it will make all the area streams rise which in turn will make the Mississippi rise and break much of the ice up. That gives me just over 2 weeks to put a new hitch and light hook-up on my truck and purchase and install a new locator on my boat. Then I’ll be ready for the open water.

This is the 4th year of the Iowa DNR’s 5 year study which is one of the reasons they closed the 3 tailwater areas for all fishing. Hopefully after next year’s closing the DNR will open these areas back up for winter fishing. Some people I talk to believe that the DNR will indeed open the areas back up for fishing or at least cut the closed season down to a couple months. I am not as optomistic and I believe that the DNR will keep these areas closed every winter for the forseeable future. If the DNR’s study prooves that closing the areas has increased the number and size of the saugers in these 3 pools I can see the DNR expanding the closed areas to all pools down river. If they can show a definate change they might even get Wisconsin to go along with closing the tailwater areas in pool 10 (Lynxvile) and pool 11 (Guttenburg). If there ever was a pool that needed help with numbers of saugers and walleyes it is pool 11. Many of the local walleye fishermen call pool 11 the Dead Sea because of the low numbers of walleye and saugers compared to most other pools.

Eyehunter

Thanks for the update eyehunter. I have been getting the tackle & tacklebox ready for the 16th.

After hearing about the floods, I was wondering do you think they will drop the river very fast after that? Just curious.

The river will more than likely drop all by itself and fairly fast unless there is a fast melt-off upstream. Actually I don’t see the river getting very high but enough to at least break up the channel ice. I don’t know what the corps will do with the dams. Right now the gates are all in winter position with the water flowing over the tops of the gates. This allows the ice to flow over the dams instead of building up above the dams. As you know when the river hits a certain level the corps open up most of the dams (gates out of the water) but it is a bit early for that to happen. Even when they do open up the gates they usually leave the gates down at Dubuque. I’m sure they have their reasons for this and I for one am not going to complain about it. Last spring the corps had all the gates up on every dam up river and down river from DBQ but the gates at DBQ remained in the water. In all the years I’ve lived in DBQ I have only seen the gates raise out of the water on the dam maybe a half dozen times. At Lynxville, Guttenburg and Bellevue they raise the gates every spring when the water goes up.

Eyehunter

Getting my stuff together for the opener. This is almost better than xmas! ha. Bumper boats, jigs bouncing off of each others boat. I am ready for it to open, just need to put some finishing touches on things.