Well the holiday is done and over with and the river can get back to normal after this weekend (thank god).
Well my weekend was cut short to one 13-hour day on the water but it was well worth it after the first 4 hours of searching and man did the fish cooperate. Thanks to some awesome tips and answers for my questions I had I decided to put a plan together. Now me being a die hard leadcore/hardline trolling guy when fishing on Pepin I decided I really needed to open up to some new ideas and ways to have in my back pocket for whatever the river throws my way. After seeing all of the live bait fish being caught lately that was my main purpose of this trip. The day started off and I went to a very contoured point that I knew held fish from the previous trip and I caught nothing, some way to start off my trip, so after working the breakline, top of the point, off the breakline and still nothing it was off to plan B. I decided it was time to pull lead and caught a couple fish for the box but nothing for size or number so after 3 fish in the box we went to plan C. The thing is that we never left the spot. We noticed what appeared to be small schools of bait suspended with arcs on the Lowrance always behind these pods. So we went to all hard-line and varied depths anywhere from around 5 ft. to 10 ft. down over 15 ft of water and began looking for these fish. This method last year I had very very good luck on the last week of June for big fish and felt I better try it. 5 minutes in wham fish on a 21” sauger and minutes later a matching twin and than nothing for close to an hour. Finally another fish hit the outside board and it turned out to be around 5 pounds measuring out very nice and a fat 25”. We combed over this area and nothing for the next hour and we had planned on a fish fry this weekend so off to some numbers spots. Plan C I headed to a long breakline with a very sharp define break and began to pull lead with #5 bleeding shap rapalas and once again very slow…boxed 5 more fish but the size was pretty small with 14 7/8” being the average size except for a few legals. So I wanted to give this live bait thing a try once more and the wind had come up a little compared to glass smooth in the morning and man did we make the right choice. We pulled phelps floaters with crawlers and leeches and for the next 2 ½ hours had non stop action until all the bait was gone.
Overall for the day with 3 of us in the boat I could not give an estimate on how man fish we caught but it was a good number. Top 5 fish being 25, 24, 23.5 and a pair of 22” eyes with all but one being caught on 3 ways with live bait.
The biggest factor for us this day sinker weight…the heavier it is the more it hung up and sprung forward but to light and it got no bites either…1 ounce was the money maker for this day. The best thing I can say is keep changing until you find what is right…leader length, sinker weight, jig color, ect all was done until we found the right presentation.
I will post up a picture of my co-worker Tom with the biggest fish of the day off of my camera phone if I can get it to work or I will have Ritter post it for me 
But Erick please next time no giant one paragraph report. My old Bi-focally eyes can’t easily read stuff like that. Thanks! 
Also Ritter wanna post that picture for me as well since this PC minded moron can not figure it out yet lol thanks 
