What a fantastic day to be on the water with Mr. Jesse Krook himself!
The day went from BS to small fish to BS to larger fish to BS to a bonus smallie to lots of BS. Oh yeah, forgot to mention the sleet/snow and much more BS.
Speaking of BS, back at the camper I was told to under rate the sauger bite because if some anglers didn’t have our luck, they would be mad at him. So of course, that’s what I’ll do. All numbers in this report are purely fictional.
Jesse was out in the morning before I was moving around. He was pitching dark blades and picked up less than 5 and more than 3 keeper saugers.
Since he’s a fisherman, and didn’t take any pictures that becomes a fish story and they don’t count. Either way, pitching blades will put some fish in your boat but for today it wasn’t the most effective way for us.
Jesse has seen me pitch before so when I asked him how we’ll be fishing today. With out a pause he said we’ll be pulling three ways. I knew what that meant. He doesn’t like to see his own blood.
The guy has a memory like an elephant. Just because the last time we were out I messed up all 4 lines we had in the water, today he only allowed me one rod. HERE! he said…that’s all you get. I felt hurt. As it turns out, one rod worked very well.
Tackle:
You know, I really didn’t pay much attention to the set up. I just worried that I would have to use the Mills Fleet Farm on line discount on Rapalas if I lost one of his sticks.
I’ll let Jesse fill in the blanks here. You know me, if there’s not a 4 oz sinker involved in the rigging, I don’t look too hard.
Our best action came right before the sleet/snow started. If I didn’t mention it, we were fishing the dam area. I was amazed at how few boats were up there. Maybe a dozen to 18? ‘Course this made it nice for boat control…but more about boat control later.
I spoke with a number of anglers today and yesterday. It seemed like the same story from each one and I’ll consolidate them here.
To catch fish near the dam on P-4 right now, fish the way you feel most confident. Now is not the time to try to learn how to use a blade bait ect. However, if your go too tactic isn’t working for you switch over one of the other tactics. It seems that everything is working, but not everything all the time.
It sure looked like everyone was catching fish today.
And I’ll still say that the P-4 regulars are a spoiled bunch. If they can’t catch 40 to 80 fish in a day they are disappointed even if they can catch 10 -20 in a few hours.
Jesse and I had a very nice day on the water. I reached my personal limit to take home and we released many more. No big fish today, but that’s not what we were after.
Last photo here is of a 10ish pound flathead stuck with a jig in the fin. These two guys had a hoot bringing her boat side. It’s belly had a well defined ring from laying on the bottom of the river. As with all snagged fish, they must be released and she’s swimming another day.
With the temps in the 50’s later on this coming week, it’s going to be a perfect time to release some saugers into Crisco™ Bay! See you out there!
Speaking of “see you out there”…
It was good to see some of the guys again on the water!
Denver had his boat full.
Redneck’s boat looked odd with Lund 85 in the front and not Chris, Richs’s son.
Tyler Holm and crew.
I know there were several other Ido’ers there that I recognize but can’t put a name too.
Here’s a picture of the WI side construction near the WI corner. Looks like a tornado when through with all the stumps.
Ps Sorry I had to turn your offer down Mr. King. It’s not that often I can fish with Jesse. Next time!
You do fish for eatin fish BK
Yeah Z, like the McRib, if no one tells me what I’m eating.
Great read BK… Very entertaining lol… Tuesday cant come fast enough..
Im impressed krook that you put up with mr whiskers for a day
Congrats you guys, sounds like a reunion down on the river! Nice saugers ta boot….. Hook up the boat? Hitch-up the Otter? Tough call!
Joel
Wonderful fictitious report!
When I see the weather ahead I will wish I could fish the Dam for some imaginery walleye…they will be there.
Good to see you our there Jesse and BK. It was a fun day to be on the water. I have had better days, but have also had much worse!! At least I had a “good partner” to fish with unlike you! We ended up keeping 11 saugers and walleyes. Vertical jigging with paddle tails put the most fish in the boat. Blades were very slow, but put the largest walleye of the day in the boat. The drive back to Eau Claire was miserable to say the least!! I94 from Baldwin exit to Menomonie was about 35MPH. Still worth a great day fishing!!
All I’m going to say about baits is match your presentation with the abundant amount of forage. Most fish came on a plain ‘ol natural shad black-n-silver stick bait and the rest on bleeding shad stick. I was running 2.5 oz. weights and about a 6’ lead line from my three-way to the stick. My biggest fish of the day came on the black and silver natural shad being pulled downstream over 2mph (just faster than the current) She was probably a good twenty inch fish that was round enough to qualify her in the 3+ lb range. This of course before I picked BK up. Also as stated in Brians report before picking up Mr. BK I landed 3 walleyes all in the 15-18″ range on dark colored blades.
Great report….er….I think!
-J.
Great report! Had to laugh sounded like the days I have my dad in my boat.
Not to change the subject….
walleye1274, you need to change your display name! That name blends in with the other 1273 walleye names out there!
Yes I did give Jesse some grief on the water. Not as much as normal thou….my seat was with in
arms swing of his.
I will come up with something Brian!
You were bundled up so much BK I didn’t even know it was you. You cat guys don’t know a nice day when you see it. Russ and I lasted longer than most out there yesterday and by the end of the day I was crying uncle—-no, not Uncle Jimbo
The drive home wasn’t a lot of fun either—the trailer kept wanting to pass me. Oh well, you got to have days like yesterday to appreciate the 50 degree days that are coming up!!!
Nice job Jesse,how much did you have to drink to calm your nerves after a whole day of BK?
Stuart, I don’t think he’s stopped yet.
Redneck, how large were the two bigger ones Russ released?
Russ had a 22 inch walleye that was just a chunk. I got a 19 inch sauger that was football shaped. Those are the two we let swim away.
It’s good to hear you over came the 5 points that were working against you.
Here I thought it was just because Jesse was in the boat with me.
Just goes to show that there’s always an excuse to give when person doesn’t fish. Getting off the couch is the hardest to over come.
Entertaining read BK . Looks like some more consistent numbers starting to show up.
Luckily it wasn’t the whole day, I did however forget to drop him off I was in such a hurry to get to The Bluffs 4 Bloody Mary’s
Ps Thanks for buying.
I’ll vouch for the sauger Jesse… I think that was the one you caught when you were coming down stream next to us. I had a hard time seeing though with all the cameras flashing though
Jesse paid you to say that didn’t he Russ.
Thanks for eating all my cheese curds
Actually I just want to get people to think we were all fishing up by the dam, so we can have the spot we were really fishing all to ourselves
You can’t fool me!
The only place Jesse drops a line is by the dam or train bridge.
We all know there isn’t any fish in the other 10 miles of river down to the head of the lake.
TravP and I were out there as well Saturday. We were in the 16′ Crestliner, and there was a guy in a Vexilar suit and some shades dancin on the deck when we pulled up by the dam(me)lol, was trying to keep warm-that didn’t last long
It was both of our first times out on pool 4, and it was an experience to say in the least… Trav doesn’t usually fish the rivers, and had no idea what a wingdam looked like on the GPS 
, so, as I’m getting tied up, I look over as Trav says “what’s this?” referring to the solid black line on the gps we were headed straight at- “THAT’S THE WINGDAM!” CRUNCH! LOL That had me laughing pretty good- and I’m sure you all know which boat was us now! We watched them pull in the flathead right next to us-thought it was a big eye til we got closer. We ended up with near nothing for our first trip with Trav snagging the only fish through the back(6″ sauger) 
We watched people catching fish all around us though! Maybe next time 
Wish I would have known you were there Killer! We could have switch partners! LOL!
I’m not saying nutten.
While reading this I believe I could hear Jesse cussing under his breath in the background
Nice fish you guys
Do I see a glove on Brian’s hand
In defense of long time river fisherman that has seen more wing dams then Dean had cookies in his life time…we were both watching the flathead being landed. The bow wasn’t stuck for very long once we both moved towards the back of the boat.
It made me recall Stuart’s story about how he dang near lost his life hopping on the wing dam to push his boat off.
Anyway, I’m glad no one saw us.
no comment
Good looking saugers guys!
I know what a wing dam looks like now…
Trav, no need to stay too far away from it. While Jesse was lifting motors and making sure I knew every cuss word imaginable, I was bringing in my rap and had a nice chunky smallie attached to it. It came unhooked when I was laughing so hard because both Jesse and I should have known where we were.
There’s some very nice fish that hang close to the wing dams!
Not to turn this into an advertisement…but James and Dustin Stuart have a video called “Mastering Plastics For River Walleyes”. It was an
eye opener for me when it came out. It gives a great idea on how to…but it’s still up to the angler to get out and use the info. Good info on how to anchor and fish wing dams. Something even I could understand.
I’m not sure if Ido has any left, but I have a first run collectors edition that I’ll let go for about $1500.00.
Sometimes, at night, when I dream of this I poop a little bit.
Nice day Brian,
what are you doing, trying to learn Multi-species fishing.
You better leave That to the experts.
But am glad you had a fun day.
Jack
Rather than start a new post, I figured I would tag onto BK’s here. Our “Go-To” lures were B-Fish-N Paddletails on 1/4 ounce Precision jigs. Jason Bellomy was using some other short tailed curly baits and was setting hooks continuosly in front of the boat. Tom Shertz and I were hucking Oystershell tails. Current seams were hard to come by, but when you were on one, it held fish! The “Pies” came off of rip-rap with a 1/32 Precision jig and a fathead minnow. This is one of those days we are going to talk about for a long time! Tom has been the King of Big Saugers this Fall! He had some horses on Pool 2 with me earlier in the month and caught and released his personal best on Friday!
Shad are thick already! Find them and you will find the walleye and saugers! 
Depths that were working for us were 18-26 feet.
Good luck to anyone getting out! I have to return to getting my deer with the smoke-pole.
Awesome fishing Tuck!
Sure have been kicking myself for not getting out this weekend.
Good luck with the deer hunting!
Who says a bass fisherman can’t catch wallys???
That day was unreal.
Small bass plastics did the trick.
As Tom said, I ALWAYS try something different.