Pool 9 and Shad Flies

A good friend and I decided to run up to P9 on Saturday to get a change of scenery and see if we could find some walleyes…
On the way up on hwy 35 we ran into several big pods of shad flies smacking into the windshield of the Chevy..so with that thought, the need for jigs and plastics and jigs and crawlers were in the early morning program..
Getting into some of the backwaters with current,water depths that were really only around 10 feet was key.. The shad fly hatch was in full swing as we saw the carcass floating by the thousands !!! We started vertical jigging with a 1/4 oz jig tipped with either a half crawler or 3/4’s of a trigger x minnow.. Hovering this offering just off the bottom mimics the larvae of the shad fly and thats what these walleyes were feeding on..

The morning plan was to run and gun to several backwater locations and put a few eyes on the box for dinner tonight and thats exactly what happened… The afternoon was planned to pitch several rock locations in search of some smallies and walleyes.. We were throwing the Rapala Jointed Shad Rap and also the NEW Rapala Rippin Rap… The rippin rap was used a lot like a jig presentation.. I would pitch it out and let the current work the bait into the sweet spot and giving it a rip to bring the bait alive throughout the return.. It seemed like after a good short rip is when the fish would react to the bait and smack it !!

The Rapala JSR’s were thrown to the rocks, and with the good amount of flow we had, there was no need to retrieve the bait very fast.. With a good cast just past the submerged rocks, a couple of good cranks and you could work the JSR back slowly and spend more time in the fish zone… Smallies like this one could not resist the bait in front of their snout for that amount of time..

All that fun results in dinner for my daughter Malorie and I !!!
This is why we do it !!!

The Tug is The Drug Baby !!