Any recent reports? Pools 9-14?

Planning to take the boat out this weekend and was curious if it is still worth the drive to the river? Anything still happening in the Iowa pools? Any help is appreciated! Thank you!

-Mark Krakau

a student of mine hit pool 14 on monday and did pretty good for a first timer to the pool. he ended up catching about 8 walleyes-2 slots-2 keepers and the rest short. he also caught about 3-4 largemouth and a lot of sheepies. caught all his fish trolling cranks-firetiger on rock. the cold front coming thru this weekend might slow things down, but other than that i have no reason to believe you shouldn’t make the trip. also have heard reports from 13 that they were catching alot of fish last week. there ya go.

Thanks for the reply Riverking. Planning to hit the river for sure….just need to decide which pool! Good luck this weekend everyone!

If it’s not too late to help, I was on 14 with my wife for about 4 hours Friday. We boated around 15 walleyes and saugers. The trolling bite did not go at all for us, so after an hour we switched up and hit some deep troughs in the backwaters. Find some current and a good sharp drop off. That is where we found them, pitching jig and leech or half crawler, letting it drop down the drop off as the current swept it along. No big fish Friday, but 8 legal sized fish and several shorts.

Thanks for posting John! We ended up going to P12 at Dubuque – first time fishing that pool. Didn’t really know what we were doing/where we were going so just went from wingdam to wingdam pitching jigs. Also trolled cranks on the wingdams but didn’t have any luck. Tried to find some on outside bends with current but was very surprised at how little flow there is right now.

The bite was pretty slow for us – ended up with 8 fish on Saturday with the largest being 21″ and only 2 shorts today…however the drum made sure that we donated our share of crawlers this weekend . Was still nice to try somewhere new and was a neat area. Guess there is always next time!

-Mark Krakau

I was just wondering what size of jig do you usally pitch?
I pretty much just use cranks but have recently thought about trying jigs. Thanks saldydog

Saldydog, the jig size varies greatly in accordance with the current, depth, wind, and size of bait. The drop off I was pitching went from 6′ to 18′ quite sharply. With a 20-35 mph quartering crosswind blowing on my line, I was using 1/2 to 5/8 oz jigs. On that same drop without wind, I may have gotten by with a 3/16th oz. jig.

The key, especially in post cold front conditions, is to present the jig/bait or jig/plastic in a fashion that closely resembles the natural pattern of movement for the bait. I generally impart very little action, just enough to loosen the jig from any hang up, then let it drift.