Pepin report… (Ouch!!)

Got out on Pepin yesterday about 2:30 til about 7:30. Expected a little faster action after hearing all of the gangbuster reports, especially seeing so many marks stacked on the sonar.

It was a little bit slow… Can’t complain, really, cause it was nice just to be on the water. Pepin looks like an awesome body of water, and it was my first time fishing it.

Started near the Pepin launch pulling cranks on core. Picked up a few eyes and saugers, but relatively slow. Tried more around Lake City, but again didn’t do much. Moved around a little and picked off one here or there. Ended up with 1 eye and 3 saugers for a fry, all around 16″. Another 4 or 5 smaller eyes and saugers released. The multi-species fairy paid a visit, though, with a pike, smallie, crappie, a few whitebass and some sheepshead.

No patterns emerged, although we were trying our hardest to figure it out. Planning on heading down there next Thursday… I’m hoping things pick up a little more by then..

We did see some guys around us picking up some fish… Not sure if they were getting fish more consistantly than us or not. Any other reports from guys who fished yesterday??

We did not try livebait on jigs or bouncers… Might have been worth a shot if we would have had more time…

Mike

Ahhh the river,

Sometimes you are the hero, sometimes you are the goat.

I’m just hoping the slow fishing was more due to the cold front weather pattern and less due to faults on out part! I can keep telling myself that, I suppose…

At least I didn’t get spawned on by a sheepshead…

nothing more humbling then fishing a river, my advice is to keep trying!

Doesn’t sound like too bad a day at all. There’s alot of fish suspended in that 20-22FOW right now. There’s also a good amount of fish glued to the bottom right off the break. As I’m sure you’d agree, when all those fish “go,” it can be non-stop.

There’s been days out there for me this year when I only do well from 9AM to noon, and the rest of the day is as you described. All in all, like Doc said, it’s the river!

Joel

Falling water temps can hinder the crank bait. Livebait rigging can really shine sometimes.

Yup, we will keep trying. I’m not complaining really, because any day out is a great day. But after the reports of 60+ fish days with lots of bonus big fish, it was slightly slower than expected. The most frustrating part was seeing SO MANY big marks just hanging in the bottom 8 feet of the water column and not getting them to go.

Oh well, we did get some and had a great time. Looking forward to next trip for sure!

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Falling water temps can hinder the crank bait. Livebait rigging can really shine sometimes.

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Will have to try that next time… It was our next step, just ran out of time…

Thanks,

Mike

I hear that draggin jigs this time of year isnt a bad thing to try

Crankbait is still pretty darn good still… We planned on fishing for 12 keeper or until noon today whatever would come first. We landed out 12 eye at 11:58. The river hasn’t been to bad either….

We were out today pulling cranks and all we could get were a bunch of sheephead

Pepin has been very good July 3 & 4th we had one big fry
cranks are killing them , it has never been better , it was a odd day on the fourth we had two back to back 7lbs ers then 30 min. later back to back 6 lb ers only two saugs both days , ill try to get some pics up