Pool 2 Dec. Walleyes.

Open water walleyes on Pool 2 in December. Does it get any better? Here I figured the boat trips on this part of the Mississippi river where done for a while after piling up over 4"s of snow in the boat on my last trip a few weeks back. Mild temps on Tuesday took care of the rest of that snow and a good portion of the ice that had the landing locked up at S. St Paul. It was boating time and big fish time.

Tuesday we started out pitching jigs to some areas that where producing well a few weeks ago. Didnt take us long to see this bite was slow at best. The next trick in the box was to drop the trolling motor and try some dragging. After a couple of adjustments to the speed the walleyes started to let us know we had the program down and when they decided to eat they where crushing the baits hard.

Each year I spend a little more time dragging jigs late in the fall. At first its seems a little odd to be trolling jigs around behind the boat as compared to vertical jigging them but it is a very worth while presentation to get familiar with and ended up producing 75% of our fish these last 2 trips. The walleyes typically just crush the baits while using this approach just like a good strike while pitching making this a very fun presentation to fish.

I have reported a fair amount this fall about pitching BfishN draggin jigs and they work fantastic for this approach but dragging was the reason these jigs where ever designed in the first place. The slender profile allows the jigs to get down fast and with the majority of the weight positioned on the bottom the jig the jig runs very straight with hook pointing up away from the bottom. Throw on a couple of fiber snag guards and a good sized hook and you have a fantastic jig. I have had a few guys ask about the weed guards scaring fish or causing missed strikes. When you feel the fish hit these jigs you will know they are not scared of them on bit and just about every walleye I have caught in the last 2 months have been exclusively on the draggin jig. http://www.bfishntackle.com/draggin_jigs.html

Wednesday started out with a rain delay to the trip and sitting in some very frustrating traffic trying to get to the landing. Started second guessing myself on what I was doing heading out in these conditions but soon after hitting the water we knew it was much better than sitting home. Numbers of fish Wednesday where about the same as the previous night. About 10 fish but the size was much better with half our fish going over 25"s and the biggest being three 27" fish and a nice 28"er. The rest where running that 23 to 24" range. Tuesday we had a 28" and 26.75 for our big fish with the other running around the 20" mark. If we are not going to catch a ton of fish its nice to catch the big ones.

Conditions on the river right now are what I would call decent for this time of year. We had to launch the boats into a lot of shore ice Tuesday. Most of that had blown out the next day but you never know when it may blow back in. There is plenty of ice drifting around out on the main channel with some large sheet running 3 to 4"s thick. You do not want to hit one of these while running wide open. Many of these sheets are gin clear ice to and not real visible. Some fishing spots where very fishable with little ice floating threw. Others where completely unfishable and we even had a couple that we got pushed off of while fishing due to large amounts of ice moving in and choking the area off. This is not summer time fishing out on the river right now and these are typical conditions to deal with and a person needs to be very cautious out there.