Pool 4 Winter Walleye Escape

Myself and 2 good friends ventured to Pool 4 this morning looking to curb the cabin fever we have been feeling.
We started the day off with the customary visit with Dean at Evert’s. Like always, Dean greeted us with open arms and filled us in on what has been going on around there. It has been pretty quiet up there most of the week, but a group of guys were just leaving that did real well, so that left us hopeful.
We hit the water around 11 a.m. with the air temp being a balmy 18 degrees and a stiff 10 mph wind blowing right up the channel. Needless to say, it was a bit chilly. Since we were hitting the water so late, we were thinking we were going to have to deal with the cold until the afternoon bite picked up. Luckily, lady luck was on our side today.
We started off vertical jigging in the 15-17 foot range downstream. With the wind blowing right in our face, and boat control being less than ideal, we didn’t get any action. We then started to drag upstream a little deeper, still with no luck. Our plan was to keep working different depths until we found what we were looking for. It finally paid off about an hour into our excursion.
The best bite for us was dragging upstream with gold glitter jigs and purple/chart. tail ringworms. We had to keep the speed between .5-.7 to get hit and followed the breakline between 26-28 fow. That is a little deeper than I like to fish, but we could not get anything going any shallower.
All but 1 fish were saugers and the other was a 17″ walleye. We had one pass where we landed 8 fish, with 2 times being doubles. The other good thing was we only had 1 fish being a dink. The ones we did get were all 15″ and above. We had a handful of good 3# saugers.
We all had a great day even with the wind and the cold temps. By late afternoon the wind had died down a little and it warmed up to a whopping 27 degrees.
A big thanks goes out to Dean for keeping the ramps in great shape, always having up to date info, and taking the time to “talk shop” with his customers.
We didn’t take a lot of pics due to the cold, but we did take one with a few of the ones we kept. Pictured from left to right is: JD (friend), myself, and Lntony. We are already looking forward to making it back over there.