Pool 2 – Sheepers Creepers

Made it down last night for a couple of hours…. nothing. I went to try a few spots that I was hoping had more current, and they didn’t. I tried my luck anyway… not one eye. Plastics, cranks, crawlers…. nada. As DeeZee would say “tough crowd”. I did manage some sheepies that ran on the large side, however. Sooo… I did manage to catch a few of those, and some whities. The pic is of a big ‘ole sheepie that took a liking to a grappler shad. The picture is a little off, as I had the timer on, and just as I grabbed the fish, he decided to be camera shy. You can sorta tell that this one was on his way to an IMMEDIATE release after the photo shoot…

I did see Jon J hitting some wingdams… hopefully he had better luck than I!

My last 3 outings to pool 2 have been tough on the walleyes, both for size and numbers. Only have managed 1-2 fish in the 15-18 inch range per trip.

Last night was no different. Only put one 17 incher in the boat. That fish came out of a shoreline current break where you could see a slight swirl on the surface of the water. The wing dam bite has tailed off as much as the current has! Seems like the water in the main channel is barely moving.

Still fun to be out as the “Other” fish will keep ya busy. The whites and sheeps are still showing up with an occasional smallie. These fish are hitting the same cranks and ringworms that I’m tossing for walleyes.

Jon J.

Just wanted to take this opportunity to thank Dino for the trip out last night, as well as the maps. We were out on pool 2 last night, with slightly less success than Jon, but it was VERY educational for me! I really appreciate all the info this site has, as well as the great people involved!! Thanks again, Dino!

Hit the upper end of two last night with Buckshot. We had pretty steady success from the start, mostly small smallies and a few small eyes and one of the darkest saugers ever. Of course, I left the cam in the truck again. Right before dark the size started to increase. Our biggest eye was in the 18″ range, caught on a Rip Shad. The hot bait for the night was a #5 jointed shad rap in crayfish color.

I haven’t been to Pool 2 for quite a while, so it was nice to be back. The weather was perfect and the BS was a flyin’

Nice to see you out last night Waterfowler. Fishing was decent-but below average. Lots of numbers, but not a lot of size. The smallies were thick like rats, but the jumps were fun. Only a handful of eyes and a couple of dark sauger as well.

I’ll bet the B/S was flying know you two guys Fowler. I may be up for a bunch of fishing this weekend! Am supposed to go to Rainy for 4 days but things may change.

I was down on 2 a couple times with outdoor writers hired by Pradco and yes the bite was tough on my end as well. Each outing consisted of only a small handful of fish. A couple 24 inch fish to show for our first trip efforts was poor considering how many miles I put on that day. The second outing was just a “hair” better than the last outing for numbers but not the size. All my second trip fish came on heavy hair worked aggressively.
I have been seeing fish coming from very shallow current swept areas.

The whitebass were more than willing to cooperate as expected and made up for the slow going on the walleye end. I was a little disappointed in the bite recently but more intrigued to get much shallower on my next trip down. Most of my fish came from 1-5 foot outside bend areas of the river.

I went out on upper pool 2 Thursday, did o.k. 5 walleyes (none over 18″,) one channel, one sucker, and a new species for me I think it was a buffalo? Looked like a sucker on steroids and the thing’s eyes were extra large. All fish were caught 10 feet or deeper, fast troll. Craw colored cranks worked better that firetiger. All fish caught before 7 p.m., even though I stayed at it until almost 9.

Today and Fri. I have been on pool #2, 3 eyes on fri 5.2 lbs was the biggin’ my work bud got, just to keep the record stright. Sunday I saw a lot of sm.bass,and wh.bass and one eye that was 16″. I trolled up in 6-8′ of water. Saturday I took my boy out, [Josh], found the sm.bass in 28′ of water riggin with only one eye.

Hit two again yesterday for about 5 hours with Buckshot. It was nice and quiet first thing in the morning, with a few small eyes coming to the boat right away. We managed to catch about a dozen eyes all morning with a few smallies, whitey, cat, and sheepy mixed in, enough to almost consider the action as steady. We did mess around for about an hour with ring worms and found our better fish with this method. The magic depths seemed to be 8-12 feet for us. By 1:00pm the traffic got pretty hectic and it was time to head home and rest up for the short week.