Walleye Mayhem on the Fox River

Fish On!
How often can you enjoy 78 degree weather in the middle of March? I don’t know but we did not hesitate to take full advantage of the summer like spring weather. I traveled down to De Pere, WI yesterday with good friend Pete Yake to fish the Fox River. A short run up from the launch and Pete’s HD7 lit up with a pod of eyes in 17 fow… he quickly set the hook into this 21 incher. The fun kept up for a couple hours, controlled drifting with vertical plastic presentations for awesome action!…The River was packed by 8AM with hundreds of boats in the mile long stretch between Voyager Park and the highway 172 bridge. We did venture downtown (down river) for awhile but after fishing for about 30 minutes we just didn’t “feel it” so we came back up to water that we had more confidence fishing

The River temp started at 44 deg and finished at 47. Current averaged around 7000 cfs. Wind blew from the South all day, building up to 20 mph with gusts up to 30 mph. The wind served to thin the crowd a great deal in the mid afternoon. Boat control was key to keeping a vertical presentation. Fish bit better during surges of current, when there was junk and debris floating in the river, the fish were in a very positive mood. Other times, the bites were few and far between. I had the extra fun of testing a Limit Creek 66MF rod for Turk with this technique in mind. Pete and I both switched off with that rod and a St Croix LTW 63MXF. We both agreed that at ½ the price this rod was a definite keeper…I had a good stretch where the Trigger X 3” minnow produced well on a 1/8 Smoochin jig.

The color preference changed a number of times with weather and light conditions. Chartreuse pepper with black jig produced in the morning. White core chartreuse with white jig was the color to use in the afternoon and easily accounted for the majority of what we caught during the day. There were also a mid day window where we caught fish on pinks (bubblegum pepper and cotton candy), followed by purple cracker chartreuse bite.. We trimmed the ringworms about 3/4” short to get more hook-ups because we had quite a few missed fish during the day including one that would have been our biggest. We boated somewhere to the tune of 45 fish over the course of the day. Majority of the fish were males averaging around 17 to 18 inches. We did bag a few females including one 22 incher but they are not biting in any significant numbers yet.
I used blades for a bit and Pete tried jigging a Clackin’ Rap. I caught a few on blades and “one eyes”. We also caught some Trigger X paddle tails and Pulse R 325’s but ringworms reigned supreme.

Another experiment today was using flourocarbon for all jigging (I used new Sufix Invisible Easy Cast 6# and Pete used Pline TX Flouro coated)… The Hi Viz Pline was very good for Pete who out fished me (again) and I was pleased with the new Sufix…much more manageable than last year’s product.

We didn’t wear green for St. Patrick’s day and we didn’t drink any green beer either. I’m a Bears fan and Pete a Lions fan, we both agreed that we were surrounded by too much green already while fishing deep in NFC North enemy territory. Pete caught a leprechaun on a ringworm but we put him back and told him to send some big females in the near future.

See ya on the water!
Tom