My boss told me it’s the best fishing he has seen on that lake in years. We are heading up next week. He said the shallow bite has been fire. To tip the hat he has been on plenty of big fish as well.
Thanks thats what I want to hear lol!
Any reports lately? The wife and I heading up there Sunday for a short fishing trip.
Congrats on the new boat!
I had a 2015 terrova 24v/80 and the spot lock was pretty good however one thing I learned river fishing is you have to point the bow into the current and let the motor hold it against the current. If pointed down river it had a hard time keeping it on a spot. I’d say the spot lock was accurate to within about 10-20ft.
Paul one thing I will say, having a motor with spot lock/ipilot link and using a humminbird it could be set to troll certain contour depths…..amazing feature and used it all the time for walleye fishing.
One thing I’d like to hear is if the new 2017+ terrova’s/ultrex’s released this year are better than the old model by as much as they claim, I hear the new ones are much better.
https://www.trollingmotors.net/blogs/product-news/2017-minn-kota-spot-lock-major-success
I’m not affiliated with the site above in any way, if its not allowed to post a link let me know and I’ll remove it.
Anyone have any luck this weekend, we caught zero out from Red door and talking to the guys around us it sound like they were doing the same. Thinking I may head back in about 2 weeks.
Have an Eskimo HC40, this year I purposely left the same tank on all winter to see how many holes it will drill, its up to 30+ and the tank is still at least half full. No issues starting it in any temp.
Any recent reports, going up there this weekend around red door, just wondering how the bite is and any tips on bait/lures to use would be greatly appreciated.
Just throwing an update out there, was out saturday/sunday and the crappies/gills and some perch were biting again but had to keep moving around to find them (seemed like we’d get a couple out of each hole before having to move on to the next one). Good luck out there
I’ve seen the same thing but never caught anything either on those scour holes. Not sure what they are.
Trolling cranks I like to go parallel with the dam or troll upstream and go right over the top on the deep end of them but p6 this year has been as weedy as I can remember it, constantly cleaning lines unless you can find a wingdam or two in a pocket of cleaner water.
What I’ve had some success with this year is tie a banana sinker or similar about 3-4ft up your line and put a floating jig on the end of it. Cast the rig in front of the wingdams. The floating jig keeps the bait off the bottom but the current pulls it right in front of them and moves it around in the water.
Lots of good ideas here, Tuma I found a company in canada that makes exactly what your talking about, they call em weed whiskers.
I also found another site where people were recommending using clip on weights to catch the weeds as they slide down the line.
Did alright trolling/jigging last weekend, nothing amazing but caught 7 total and 3 keepers. We had to try a lot of wingdams before we found one with fish biting. We found them south of the powerlines.
Only problem we had is some a-hole fishing off a jetski saw us catch a few and starting fishing 10 feet a way from our boat. Ended our day a bit early.
This board seem a lot less active than a few years ago, there’s got to be some other pool 6 guys around to give an update or two.
This is a slightly older post but I had the 597 and disliked it for a couple of reasons.
1. Map scrolling is painfully slow on that model, it has an older style slow processor which seemed to take forever if you wanted to look ahead of your boat or check different areas on the mapping application.
2. For river fishing where its mostly shallow, the beam width is very narrow (originally when I bought it they listed a wider beam width, after I bought it I saw they revised the specs downward to show the narrower beam).
Do yourself a favor, sell that and buy one of the new models if your going to use mapping or make it a secondary on the front of the boat. I sold that one and bought an 899 and was much much happier with it.
I was out on Monday but only caught bass and garbage fish on some of the wingdams down from the winona bridge. Of course it wasn’t ideal weather being hot + bluebird skies and middle of the day when we were out there.
we tried trolling the dike but there was so much garbage in the water we stopped after about 30mins and tried the wingdams mentioned above.
Some of the boathouse guys were telling me the wingdams closer to the dam was holding a few fish but sounds like it was slow this weekend for everyone I talked to.
Hope that helps.
The app findship is free and works great too
The order to check things
1. Check fuse block if you have one, make sure fuse is good and that wires are connected.
2. Check that the wires are connected to the light switch
3. If all those are good check the bulb
4. Check the socket with a multimeter to see if its getting power
Is the light fixture built into the boat or is it a light on a post that you stick into a socket?
At the landing just downstream of lock 7 we get back to the ramp after a day out on the river and these 3 guys are backing their boat in, they get it in the water and the backend starts to sink when they realize they forgot the tie down straps so out they go.
They must have got overly worried about having the boat strapped cause one of the guys took off the bow rope and on the way back down for round two they dumped the entire boat on the ramp (they had a roller trailer). Two other guys on the ramp and I all head over and we had to lift/drag the boat off the ramp and into the water after we got done laughing about it.
heading up to vermilion Saturday (5-6) for 4 days, any reports out there?
How was your trip, we had great fishing last weekend but a mayfly hatch and bluebird sky days in the middle of last week slowed things considerably for us. Caught a nice 38″ northern and a 15in Crappie along with about a dozen slot walleyes.
Price lowered to 825obo must go.
I use Scotty holders and flush mounts on my fish and ski. Work great, are well made and 0 issues in the years I’ve used them.
I’ve got four of the holders in my boat, in the picture you can see the rods and two of the four flush mounts on the back of the deck.
Just got back. Caught a lot of fish (walleye, northern, bass, bluegill) though nothing terribly big. My dad had a nice 24″ he caught which was big walleye of the trip and I caught some of the biggest bass I’ve ever caught up there.
We did find a couple of spots where we were marking tons of big fish but the bite died off after some storms rolled through and nothing we tossed at them could get them to bite.
We had much better luck on the west side (around treasure island and around Norwegian bay) and oak narrows (anywhere in there) then we did east. About an hour before sunrise to an hour after and that same two hour period around sunset were definitely the best for walleye. 3-14ft of water seemed to hold all the biters, only the 24 my dad caught was in deeper water and that was while reeling in the trolling rods before slip bobbing for a while. Caught a few walleye on minnows, caught a few on worms but by far the best way to find eaters and bigger fish was trolling shad raps this trip (perch color by far, everything else was spotty). Oak narrows gets my vote for best walleye fishing overall right now.
I should mention Cook hospital has a great ER staff, I managed to hook myself while getting a northern out of the net and they had it taken care of in about 20 minutes late at night. You even get a new fishing lure for your troubles, they said they like to generate repeat business 
We’re heading up there this week, I’ll keep you posted on how we do.
Fishing around the st charles street boat landing can be alright too. Theres a rocky outcrop and a nice area of slack water the ramp creates.
Was up there yesterday also. On the north end we caught a couple trolling perch colored rap’s, a bunch of small ones and a nice 19″ eater. Caught a couple of small ones and one eater just south of lake city. A few stripes in the mix as well.
Water temp was only about 53-57, give it a week or two and trolling bite should be prime.
Thanks for the update, be out there tomorrow morning also. First time out with the boat this year finally!
Quote:
I am confused I believe the current boathouses cannot be sold, they can only be kept in the family. The DNR is trying to get rid of them. I would check this out first, to be sure it is duable.
Edited to add at least in Wisconsin.
Thanks for the heads up, I had not heard of that. Just sent the dnr a request for info on this.
Thanks for the replies 
Cant wait to go, the place we’re going to be staying is pretty much right in the middle, on Frazer bay it looks like…we’ll probably try all over the place.
Seems like Daisy Bay gets a lot of hits and found a few youtube videos of people catching fish around that area. Also picked up a FHS map…probably try a bunch of those as I’ve had good luck with them in the past.
Quote:
With all this talk about new faster processors in the new Birds I went looking to find out more info and can’t find any.
Where is this info coming from, HB, stores, shows, reps, fisherman? How much faster are the new processors than the last years?
I also noticed in my search that even though the price point came down that some features were also taken away. Guess the old saying still holds true “nothing is free”.
Maybe buying last years model you might get more bang for his buck.
I went from a 597 to 899. The difference is night and day, especially on loading map charts off the lakemaster chip. The 597 used to take forever to load and if you wanted to scroll around a bit…take a few more seconds to load tiny bits of the map.
The 899 loads almost instantly and can scroll around anywhere/any distance with no noticeable lag. Button response is much faster also.
To me the improvement in charting is worth the price alone. 
Thats awesome, never thought to see if the si could be used while stationary, man I can’t wait till the ice melts to water test this thing.
I fish pools 4-7 on the mississippi, any idea if they’ve updated the maps for these? I’ve got the MN version 4, wondering if its worth upgrading.
Quote:
Spyder…. I am about to purchase one of these units. Why the two transducers? Is it about mounting on a Deep V?
Also, all the conversation about even upgrading the standard unit that comes with it… a knowledgeable guy at Bass Pro said unless I was fishing really deep water (I don’t), that it wasn’t needed. I have not found other good info on it either way.
1. I’m running two of them because the outboard (no jackplate) on my boat would block the left SI beam. Humminbird recommends 5? inches of clearance between the transom and outboard. Otherwise if you run a jack plate you can mount it centered on the transom with no problem. I’m happy with the performance of the boat so it was cheaper to go with a second transducer than a jackplate.
2. The compact SI transducer that is included doesn’t have the 800mhz signal capability even though the 899 head unit does does. Basically the higher the frequency, the more detailed the picture can be provided. Trading it into Humminbird cost me 75 dollars…a lot cheaper to do it now than to buy it later.
I have to admit Im surprised that humminbird didnt include an HDSI transducer with it..kinda lame if you ask me that you have to pay to upgrade. On the other hand, the 899 is about 300 bucks cheaper than the 898 model was.
