Just curious about the water depth below 169. I have always been afraid of venturing up beyond St. Anthony and the maintained channel.

Getting out of the truck after a two hour trip to the water is enough to remind me I’m a relic.

What disturbs me more is the article in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press that reports on a study that found that even being slightly over weight and in your fifties is not good for your longevity.

How is this for an odd occurance. I was up in the BWCA several years back fishing smallies. I watched a chipmunk run down a log almost to the water line to get a nut. It sat there eating it and a northern jumped out of the water and grabbed the chipmunk. I didn’t see that chipmunk again but a little while later that northern jumped back out of the water and set another nut on the log.

Was on D and Olson today, everything was very slow. The only bass I caught were small ones up on the docks. The water is really green, I think it is algae bloom but am not really positive about that but the clarity is way down from a couple of weeks ago. All the heat might have something to do with it. Maybe someone else knows about that.

Try this link http://www.mvp-wc.usace.army.mil/projects it will give information on all the flows.

was out there last week. wacky rigged worms in eight to ten feet caught a half a dozen with three over three. all of them solid hits. I have trouble staying on the water in the heat, and the wind. Man, I can do the heat, but can’t stand the wind.

On the river, in the rocks, around docks, and on the timber it has been a bitsy tube by Strike King in white or brown and chartruese on a 1/8 oz tube jig. However, the smallies have been inhaling them the last couple of weeks, and I mean really gut hooking. They will be on them even before I close my bail. I have found that a #3 Mepps in-line spinner in Black and Chartruese has been very good and has cured the gut hooking problem as well.

I see the post about the wingdams above St Paul. Do they hold fish? The wingdams I have fished are from the Airport down. some of them have been really productive. I have never had much luck with the dams above on to the confluence. I have always attributed it the fact that that area has the majority of mixing between the Mississippi and Minnesota. I am interested that people even concentrate any of their fishing time there.

Thanks for the information. That is the same site I use but for some reason the flow has not been shown for Lock and Dam 1. I checked someother the other locksand there is a column for CFS flow. Of course there is now flow coming over the dam right now so no big deal. But I wonder why it is missing.

The lock will monitor 16 but it is a risk to think they will answer. As was said, 14 will get them to respond because it is the lock monitor channel.

Thanks Boone. You know, I have visited that site regularly for years now getting flow numbers but have never, ever pulled up that firstbox to see what other information was being provided. Lo and behold all sorts of info is there. Live and learn.

If you have a radio call on channel 14 and request a north bound or south bound lock depending on if you are going up river (north) or down river (south). If you don’t have a radio go up to the end of the lock wall where you will find a cord for a call “button,” pull the cord. The lock master will call over the speaker and ask what you want. Tell him you want to lock through. He will tell you how long it will be before the lock is ready for you. Time depends on whether or not he has to raise or lower the water in the chamber for you. When he is ready for you the gates will open and a green light by the lock will come on. Drive into the lock and proceed until you see a rope or two hanging over the edge for you. Grab the rope and enjoy the ride. Remember don’t tie the rope off, just hold it. When the lock is ready for you to exit, just wait until the lock master sounds a horn for you then leave the chamber.

I can still remember how reluctant I was to go through a lock. First time through was with a friend in the Coast Guard, turns out to be a piece of cake, not intimidating at all. And for me it opened up a whole private fishery for me. But that is another tale.

Good luck Steve

Bigpike, another site that will give you history of flow is http://www.mvp-wc.usace.army.mil/. Follow it on through to the lock and dams area. There you will find lists of the lock and dams and you can see how the flow has been at each one. You can retrieve data from a long time ago too. Good luck.

I tried that this past weekend, was on an east metro lake, fun to be on the water, but flat water is not nearly as nice as moving water.

DeeZee

I have fished the discharge from the water treatment plant and across from it but never made it past the railroad bridge. I have heard there are a couple of good spots up by the airport. Do you know of them?

DeeZee, are you going out of the 494 ramp and going down or above downtown?

I do not think that speed limit is for the entire river. Pool 1 has a 45 mph speed limit posted on the bridge supports.

I have caught a couple of largemouth as high as Watergate, one 3lbs right off a break just out of the main channel where smallies stack up.

I wonder whether the light fishing pressure comes from the C&R regs or an attitude that the fishing is always better if you drive for an hour or more. Maybe people think the river up here is still really dirty and doesn’t hold quality game fish.

But, for pure fishing enjoyment pool 2 is terrific. I had someone in the boat with me one time when he caught a 20 pound carp. That thing pulled us around for almost 10 minutes on 8 pound test before we ever saw it. The guy, an good angler, appreciated the sport even after seeing the fish. There are a couple af places where you will find excellant quality white bass, and when fished on ultralight they are great sport.

If you aren’t strickly a walleye fisherman, or someone who has to take fish then for my money pool 2, right in my backyard, is just about perfect. Weekdays you can have it to yourself and it is small enough to learn most of it quickly, except that stumpfield across from Grey Cloud, (on the right descending bank) Has anyone ever fished it with success?

Check the DNR offices in St. Paul. They have a free booklet on the river that is accurate about both wingdams and the like as well shore information. The Coast Guard puts out a set of charts for the river that are really good, although 10 years old but I don’t think you could get tem as quickly.

Locked up into pool 1 today. Talked to the guys working the lock. They said that the closed part of pool 3 was being patroled by boats that have 50 caliber guns mounted on them. Not sure about that but it sounds like they are taking things seriously. What do those of you from down that way hear, or see?

Add another to the list of satisfied hummingbird owners. I use it on pools 1 and 2, tight pools, high bluffs and bends. I can reach the locks just fine with it. Only complaint is handling it it wet weather with the plastic sleeve. It is hard to turn the knobs.

During the KFAN Bass Tourney last week-end we saw some real fancy glass walleye boats just running up and down the river, mostly on pool 3. We assumed they were prefishing for the mwc event, but we did not see them fish at all. Would someone speculate on what they were doing? Were they timing runs, just trying to mark fish, using a camera to spot fish or what? Thye seemed to be using alot of gas, and doing very little fishing.

I am with you about pools 2 and 3, lots of good looking water for smallies and actually in upper pool 2 I catch plenty but all of them small. Pool 1 holds a lot of small fish too. I was really impressed with the size coming out of pool 4. Fished pool 3 on Sunday during the tourney and got skunked, Caught a few on the rip rap but nothing with any size. Since we were out of the money, we stopped fishing the rip rap about mid-day and tried to figure out the wing dams. My partner read alot about how to fish wing dams so we thought we would put some of that information to use. Did not have a lot of success with that either. I wonder what the factors are that determine that whole size thing, because I don’t understand why size is so hard to find in 1, 2, and 3.

Do you think they are more schooled up this time of the year? Up in pools 1 and 2 I have thought they have been spread out more, except for those I find right under the Dam.

I also fished the tournament. What was most inpressive to me was the consistency Jim produced. I think 22 pounds the first day and 18 the next. Quite a few teams produced good weights the first day and then did rather poorly the next day.

I have a question about the way most people fish their spots. We did not go down through Pepin so I don’t know about how those guys fished. Maybe it didn’t matter because the drop-off wasn’t so severe. But it seemed that most boats were standing off shore quite a bit, casting just ahead of the boat and retrieving back to the boat. With the shoreline dropping off so fast along the riprap it just didn’t seem that the lure would be staying in the strike zone very long. Of course getting in along the shore and casting more parallel with the shore the way we did didn’t put many fish in our boat either. (We might have done a little better had we fished more spots.) My partner speculated that most boats were standing off because they didn’t want to bump their boats. Can anyone think of other reasons?

I have not found Powerpro at either Galyan’s or the Mountain, but Joe’s in St Paul has it.

I was up there about 5:50 through about 9:00. I run that Nitro 185FS. We caught the smallies using the jointed shad raps with a slow roll in shallow water, as well as a stop and go when I would bang it hard against some of the bigger rocks up around the lock.

I have begun to use PowerPro for jigging and some crankin’ as well and am beginning to really like it. I have been a mono kind of guy for a long time, liking the softness the stretch gives me in hooksets with tubes. The light weight powerpro line is really, really sensitive, pricey true, but the cost is made up with saving the cranks and Gammi hooks I use for the tubes. I have found I can be a little more patient with the hooksets with this line.

I tried the crayfish colored ones earlier tonight up by the Ford Dam. Caught several nice smallies, 14- 15 in, with them. I think they run just about as deep as the 5’s and they show alot of action in the retrieve I think they will be productive for smallies. I don’t know how they will be for walleye though.

To add my two cents to this conversation. I think it depends on how you want to “feel” the lure. I throw alot of tubes for smallmouth, don’t vertical jig much. Anyway, I think you need a fast tip with a really fast taper, and it should be a one piece as well. I think you can find rods like that for between $50 and $115. I like the Fenwick HMG and have been happy with the HMX . I use a 7ft Falcon Lowrider as well. All of them are in that midrange price area. I’ll say though that they feel completely different then a BPS IM8 medium I just tried tubing with the other day. That is really stiff and the taps of both the bites and the bottom were really distinct with that one. They were really sharp while with the other rods the taps telegraph much softer. With any rod you have to use it enough to understand how to translate what it is telling you.

Beyond the rod is the type of line you are using with the combo. For instance, mono translates much differently then the braided lines.