Mississippi River Pool 4 3/31/12

Another weekend on the mighty Mississippi has come and gone. Although too short like it normally is, it sure was a good one! Not only did the fish cooperate for the most part but I was able to spend some time with some very good friends, meet some new people, and visit with many others.
This is one of my favorite times of the year for a couple of reasons. One of course being the good to great fishing, along with some true trophies. The other would be you get to meet so many people and see others that you haven’t seen for a year or more. I would say the company around the boat landing, at campfires, and on the river is just as exciting as catching that next 10 pounder.

All it took was a few phone calls to some good friends and we had a game plan together to attack the water and catch up on life in general. Our game plan for the weekend was to once again look for that fish of a lifetime but also to find a few “eaters”. That in itself put a different perspective on the outlook for the weekend. I knew if we didn’t catch a big fish or a live well full of eaters we were still going to have a good time. Between the laughs, stories, and reliving old memories we still managed to catch some fish!

With the water level, flow, and water temp dropping over the past week we had to make a few small changes in our presentations, locations and techniques. Although not major changes they were just enough to make an average day, great. General locations haven’t changed much other than the fish are more spread out in a location and more than likely that “spot on the spot” has moved slightly due to the change of the current seams.
Along with the slight change in location came a change in techniques and lure choices. Although blades still put the majority of fish in the boat I saw an increase in the amount of fish caught on plastics, hair jigs and minnows.
Also with the cloud cover and slightly lower water temps the fish seemed to be in a more neutral mood compared to the past few weeks. With that comes a slower presentation, whether it is working a blade slower and shorter pulls or slowly drifting a plastic past them.

Although I haven’t myself, I have heard a few reports of others catching some post spawn females. I would say the majority of females are still pre-spawn, BUT they are not very far off from dropping their eggs. The majority of the larger females we caught had a very loose and saggy belly, telling me that are getting very close. We also saw a few walleyes and saugers that were just starting to drop their eggs. I believe our time is very limited for catching those large pre-spawn fish but there is still a little time to get out there and get that last one!

Until next time…….