Mississippi River Pool 4 Report

Well this report may be a little outdated, but I wanted to wait a little while before posting this until the majority of the tournament season has ended on Pool 4. The last few months of Walleye fishing on Pool 4 of the Mississippi River has been one for the ages. In a normal Spring, I typically find myself fishing the Mighty Miss quite a bit from Mid March through Late May. Unfortunately, this year had a little different start. The high water in March and April meant that I was only able to see the water a handful of times during the much awaited Pre-Spawn period. Although I was a little disappointed that Mother Nature threw a wrench in the Spring bite, I was optimistic that the high water could potentially yield a fantastic Post Spawn bite. Little did I know how good of a bite I was actually in for…

April 23rd was the first day I made it out since the Freeze Your Butt Tourney on March 5th, which is quite a long time for a self proclaimed river nut. Upon starting the day, we found that the water was still very high and temperatures were still in the mid to high 30’s. The water was intruding well into the trees this morning, which made the pitch bite tough, since the big girls were hiding well within the cover. Instead we decided to concentrate on a couple of the current seams that had set up in hopes of finding more consistent action. We found that the jig bite was nonexistent this weekend and we had to turn to a different method to catch our fish. Dubuque rigs with a 1oz dropper and a Chartreuse Pepper or Purple/White paddletail as a lead were the ticket. Slowing moving upstream at .1-.2 MPH allowed us to cover water much more slowly than others that were slipping with the current downstream, and also allowed us to work certain pieces of the current seams much more efficiently. This outside the box thinking allowed us to put over 60 fish in the boat in the course of a few hours while traditional methods seemed to go sour.

May 7th was the first weekend that I found some moderate water temperatures in the high 40s to mid 50s and I was confident that some of the Walleyes would be done spawning and on their way to typical post spawn locations. The next month following was probably the best month of Pool 4 river fishing I have ever experienced with 3 fish over 29”, 3 over 28”, 8 over 27”, 11 over 26” and 9 over 25”, a total of 34 fish over 25” making it to the boat. What impressed me was when I looked back at my fishing log and found that I only spent approximately 53 hours fishing post spawn holding locations, which is an average of one big fish every 90 minutes. (Certainly a personal best for me in that category)

Most of the fish caught over the Post Spawn period were caught on 3-Way Rigs with Live Bait in areas of slack water next to fast moving water. The bait of choice changed from day to day, but the secret was to move SLOW! .1-.2 MPH was key to keep the baits in their face long enough for them to commit. We also caught a lot of nice fish on wind-swept points on the top third of the lake trolling #9 and #7 floating Rapalas on 3-Ways, moving at a pace of .6-1.0 MPH. This rig turned out to be a fantastic search tool to find active fish, then allowed us to fine tune the approach from there.

This last weekend’s Master’s Walleye Circuit would highlight my last weekend down on Pool 4 until fall, so it was a little bit of a bittersweet moment. The Post Spawn bite continued to hold strong thanks to higher than normal water levels and flow. These walleyes certainly took their time from returning from their typical spawning locations back to the lake, an even thought it was early June we found fish holding in typical post spawn locations they were in over a month ago. Needless to say, Pool 4 was able to come through and give me quite a nice farewell bite this weekend. After leading the tournament after day one with a 5 fish bag of 32.27lbs , we came up a little short with only 13lbs on Saturday, but still good enough for a 4th place finish.

The last couple of months down on Pool 4 have been some of the best times out on the water in recent memory. I learned a lot this year about fish movements and was also able to fine tune a couple of new techniques as well. Now it’s off to the lakes for the rest of the summer, but I’m counting down the days until I return back to Pool 4 for the Fall Bite!