Pool 4 help?

Hello!

Planning to head up to Red Wing on Thursday for a couple days of fishing. Never been there before and was looking for any updates on the bite/conditions. We’ll be staying in Red Wing and am planning to launch at Evert’s Resort (after reading all the comments about Dean, that seemed like a no brainer!!). I’m admittedly not much of a river fisherman, but have heard great things about Pool 4 and am going to give it a shot. I have some ringworms, but does Evert’s have a good supply of both bodies and jig heads so I can pick a couple more up? Any suggestions on colors would be great! Other presentations?

After reading a couple of the recent reports, it sounds like dragging is the way to go. Can anyone offer more info on this technique? Is this basically drifting with the current or is there more to it?

Any other tips on location, presentation or just general info would be greatly appreciated. I’m really looking forward to this trip and would love to hook into one of those monsters that I’ve been seeing photos of for the last couple of years! Hopefully the weather cooperates! Thank you!!

-Mark Krakau

Mark-

Dean has literally everything you need for a successful day….ringies in every pattern, jigheads of all sizes and colors, (gasp) minnows, snacks, GREAT ADVICE, everything.

Here’s an in-depth treatment on dragging: Halfen: The Art and Science of Jig Dragging

I was out for half a day yesterday….my report has a few pointers on currently hot colors.

Have a great trip, and be sure to let us know how you did!

Yup Evert’s one stop shop, all you need right there.

As far as launching goes, not only is it the best place, really it’s the only, there is a public launch on the wi channel Frankly just looking at it scares me, had near 2 feet of snow on it last I looked at it, it’s also very steep. I see people use it, I’m not sure why, for a small fee you got a good safe launch that’s salted and sanded, and all the free advice you can handle.

Get your up to the date advice from Dean when you get there, and if you bring him cookies you’ll get better advice. Not kidding on the cookies-just make sure BrianK is not around!

Thanks for the replies everyone!

Jason – that is a great article! Sounds like a lot of adjusting to the conditions, kind of similar to drifting or jig trolling, so hopefully I can get the hang of it.

I’m curious if the bite is so light sensative, do people try different techniques during the day? Does anyone pull 3-ways or stickbaits? I can’t wait to get up there!

Thanks again,
-Mark Krakau

They sure do Mark……but during higher flow and dirty water conditions,today as we speak,low flow and very clean water.

Thanks for the reply Dean. See you on Thursday!

Myself and Belgianbuctail were up there early Sunday morning. It was a whopping 1 degree when we launched the boat Of course we stopped in and talked with Dean to get the latest info before heading out. One thing about Dean that sets him apart from most bait shops, he will tell you the honest truth on the bite. He told us the daytime bite was very tough but a few fish could be found. He gave us some info on starting depths that eliminated a lot of the searching from the get-go. Sure enough, we started off in the depth he recommended and we had a keeeper sauger in the boat on the first drift. By the time we decided to leave we had 4 fish in the boat with the largest being an 18″ sauger. All the fish came on a sunburst jig and a cotton candy ringworm. We spent the entire time dragging the sand.
As always, it was a great time and good to talk with Dean again Sorry, no pics this time. Our hands were to frozen to even think about getting the camera out

Was up on Pool 4 Thursday PM through Saturday AM and thought I would post a report.

As I mentioned before, I’m not much of a river fisherman. In fact, only fished the river a couple times and was limited to pulling cranks over wingdams in the summer. This was a total different experience.

We launched out of Evert’s and was able to meet Dean prior to heading out. It was great meeting you Dean, thanks for all of your help!

I guess that we had mixed results in the end. We did catch some fish, but certainly nothing to brag about. I think that we ended up with the following counts: Thurs – 7, Fri – 7 and Sat – 0 (we only fished for a couple of hours and had to hit the road). It sounded like some people really got into them early and late, we probably should have hit the water an hour or two earlier than we did each day and weren’t so fortunate with the evening bite.

We spent most of the time dragging ringworms with 3/32 or 1/8oz. jigs in 15-20′ of water and moved a little shallower at night around 10′. Spent most of the time moving at .6 mph according the GPS and slipping with the current.

I guess that there was a little bit of a learning curve associated with this style of fishing for the first time and I would certainly do things a little different next time. I know that there were fish there (we dropped an Aqua View and were amazed at what we saw!). Probably should have switched up speeds/jig weights/colors more often to try and find a combo that worked and also varied our depths more to find active fish. We could have fished deeper water and caught small sauger all day, but that wasn’t what we were after.

Any suggestions that might have increased our results? Overall, I enjoyed experiencing a new area and would like to give it another shot sometime. Who knows, if the bite takes off and my schedule allows I might just be back up in a couple of weeks?

Good to meet you as well!
Yes there is a learning curve as you mentioned,however the bite was just dang slow while you were here…..