7/31/03 Upper Pool 4 Report

This is my latest upper Pool 4 report. The fishing is good for sheer numbers and a couple different presentations have put fish in my boat.

Upper Pool 4 Report

Dustin,

first of all … Kick Butt Report, great reading…

Trolling the jointed shad raps, do you have a system on this…what I’m getting at is I think the jointed SR’s sink , not float…do you troll these any different that the #5 or #7 SR that float ?

Thanks Bud,

Great report bud Maybe we will run in to each other this weekend Good luck out there [like you need it]

Dave good question. I troll the jointed the same as you would any other crank bait, I believe they are a suspending bait not a sinking bait but someone correct me if I am wrong. The biggest factor seems to be the amount of line you run, the amount of line I run depends on how deep the area is that I am targeting. I have done much better the last month or so on the jointed as opposed to the regular #5 and #7 shad raps. I did get some fish on regular #5 on Wednesday but they were all short

Jim, I would rather be lucky than good any day . Might see ya this weekend.

Great report, cloud cover is making a huge difference for me too. So your attention to detail can help us all, on any body of water. See ya Saturday.

Jointed SR are realy nice but they float till you real. Yery nice post.

Great Report and pictures by Dustin. My son is excited about fishing after seeing his picture on the FTR 7/31 report. Dustin put my son and I on fish on a high pressure day after a mayfly hatch, which I could have never done myself, especially not being very familiar with the area. We caught 25-30 fish with Dustin in 6 hours, and caught a similar amount of fish on Pepin by ourselves over the course of 5 days and 15+ hours. The morning with Dustin really made our trip. Thanks Dustin!

Randy, good to hear the rest of your stay was a good one and thanks for the kind words. I have another picture of that fish, I will e-mail it to you sometime in the near future.

“The big fish just weren’t coming to the boat, so Swany had to put the size twelves to work.”

(Oh come on, you were all thinking it)

Nice fish, bud!

It is interisting to here what depths you are trolling in. Are you running the main motor threw the shallow waters? On pool 2 I have been staying out in the 10′ plus range on the sand figuring the motor would spook fish running shallower. I think I will be widening my depth range next time out.

I troll through 4′ of water all the time using my kicker running long lines and never really give the potential for spooking fish much of a thought any more. I used to fret over it but the fish just don’t seem to mind. Some days they’ll move off to the sides of your boat and won’t be anywhere near your plugs as they go by if you’re running short line but for the most part, 100+’ of line and if they’re feeding, the fish just don’t seem to pay much attention to the little bit of noise my T 8 makes.

James pretty muched nailed in on the head. When I troll in depths of 5′ or less I always be sure and run longer lines 100′ plus all the way up to 200′ at times to decrease the spook factor. Another little trick to help you gat a few more bites in shallower water is to make sharp S-turns back and forth, not only will this allow your plugs to run at different speeds with the S-turns, but it will also allow your baits to cover water your boat never even went over .

Keep in mind on some days when trolling that shallow stuff the fish will chase bait fish right in your prop wash. On days like this a really short line will get those fish when a longer line would just be ignored

Excellent report Dustin. Lawrence

nice OCC plug there!

I was starting to think nobody else watched the show!

What? Everybody loves the Tuttles, Paul and Paul JR.