Mississippi River, RedWing, MN Pool 4 Walleye and Sauger Fishing Report

Well, it’s nice to be home and on-line again. I have been on the river and staying at Everts Resort guiding from March 24 straight thru until the 1st of April. I have not seen a computer in that time frame and would like to thank those who had the patience to wait for my return to answer your questions and guide trip requests via email and private messages.

Now on with the fishing! The walleye and sauger fishing was fair to good during my stay for numbers of fish in the 17” to 23” range, some days were better than other as they always are. 15 to 25 nice walleye and sauger in the above size range was the norm on most trips with a couple of slower days mixed in. The beginning of my stay I started trips looking for more of a big fish bite versus the numbers game and came up empty handed on most occasions. It wasn’t long and I realized the bigger fish were still scattered across the channel of the river and pinpointing them in good numbers with the lower water wasn’t easy. Vertical jigging in 12’ to 25’ of water was the best game in town until the river finally decide to fill it’s banks putting those eyes and saugers in some of the classic current break areas in bigger concentrations. My best vertical jigging bait for my stay was a black or chartreuse sonar in the 1/2oz size. The blade baits were good to me but I saw guys catching fish on several different baits in areas around us. During my stay I took fish on several baits as others did as well. It seemed a bit of everything was able to put some fish in the boat at times making it frustrating trying to pattern a solid bite at times. I guess that’s why they call it fishing!

By the end of the weekend the river started to fill it’s banks with a steady increase of rising water. This got me excited as I knew it wouldn’t be long and I would be able to get a casting bite going and I was right. By the beginning of this past week I saw better numbers of fish around the banks that had abandoned the main river channel escaping the main flow of the river. The plastics bite was finally going for me. With the lower water we saw in the middle of last week I could not catch a cold casting plastics or hair, vertical jigging was the best game in town. Best casting baits for me were purple, chartreuse pepper and pearl blue K-grubs on 1/8oz to 5/16oz jigs. The jig size varied on the depth and wind conditions in the area I was targeting. By weeks end ringworms has a good showing for me as well in any of the purple or chartreuse patterns. Purple/chartreuse tail took top honors as the best producing ringworm pattern. Fish were taken casting our baits in water depths of 3’ to 22’ depending on where the current break I was targeting happened to be located.

All in all is was a great 9 days to be on the river, even with the constant changing of the weather and water conditions daily. Big fish honors for the week out of my boat goes to Dean Marshall who caught the first walleye pictured above right before sunset on Saturday the 27th. This eye was just shy of the 9lb mark by a couple of oz’s. Dean also had a mongo sauger in the 21” plus class that hit the scale at 4.1lbs. Congrats Dean! Others pictured here were fortunate enough to get a handle on some of the better walleye as well This next picture is of Alan Corzine, we took this 7.5lb fish at the base of some rip rap at high noon last Thursday the 25th. Next we have Dan with a 4.6lb sauger and again with a 7.6lb walleye that unfortunately was snagged right in the tail. It just goes to show even if you are in the right spot you got to be able to make um bite!

On a side note…….. With higher water finally showing the begging of this week, the big fish started to make a daily appearance for some guys. No one is consistently on 6lb plus walleye but there are 4 to 5 isolated incidents of 27” to 31” walleye being caught and reported to Everts Resort daily since the higher water has made it here and stabilized for the most part on Wednesday the 31st. One guy was good enough to take a whopper at 13.5lbs. I have not seen the picture of this big eye but hopefully Steve from Everts will have the chance to share it with us.

I would like to thank each individual again for spending a day in my boat over the last 9 days. I look forward to doing it again in the future.

I’ll see ya on the river!

Pictures can be clicked on for larger view!