Mississippi River Fishing Report 4-15-2011

This report will be an overview of my pre-spawn walleye and sauger fishing on the mighty river. My guide season started the middle of March. Fishing was good after a long winter but slow on the catching end. The onset of rapidly rising muddy water, and falling water temps put the fish in a very negative mood. My first two trips of the year were pretty slow going for boating fish. The first two groups I fished with were great company. I hope you guys learned a thing or two on how not to catch a lot of fish in muddy cold water….. All kidding aside, once we see that first onslaught of muddy cold water the bite is always a tough go until we start to see the water clear up and the water temps start to rebound. Happens every Spring for a 3-5 day stretch. Once I get good enough to predict when this will happen, I will be able to easily avert fishing the mighty river in that time frame !

Once again, finding a stable walleye bite was difficult for my boat this Spring. With water well out of the river banks it made those walleye hard to find. Must be back in the trees…….that’s my excuse anyway! Even though I never found a consistent honey hole, we did however spend some time casting on each of the last eight trips I ran. Each day, except for one, we were able to make a few connections on the hard to find walleye. Casting pro-blue Moxies, or big white colored shad bodies were my best pitching baits for these shallow water walleyes. The average eye was in the 21″-23″ class with a couple of better ones in the mix.

The sauger bite? Well, lets just say once the water clarity improved and the water temps were on the up swing, it was about as good as it can get ! You know the bites good when you can boat 50-120 14″-21″ sauger in a 7 hour time frame, 7 guide trips in a row! The boat traffic was very light this Spring due to the water levels. It wasn’t just my boat landing this many fish per day, there were a few others utilizing the same presentation and seeing the same results! Dubuqe rigging in 12′-25′ of water was the presentation of choice. Paddle tails were our #1 producer on most days with ring worms making a strong showing at the end of my 7 day run. Purple/chartreuse tail, pro-blue, chartreuse pepper were our best colors.

I personally have not boated a post spawn walleye or sauger yet. Many of the fish we landed last time I hit the river, walleye and sauger included, were dropping eggs once in the boat. There has been some post spawn walleye and sauger boated by others in the past few days. This is second hand information from reliable sources.

As always, thanks again to those groups that shared the boat with me last week!

That’s all for now, I’ll see ya on the river!