Hey All !!! 
It’s been a hot hot summer and the fishing has been pretty good on Pool 10…
With the heat of the day almost unbearable getting out early has been the ticket for this guy.
Casting cranks to the rocks , weather they be wing dams or rip rap shoreline you can pick up a good mix bag of fish..
One morning Steve and I go out and got a jump on the weather and Steve pulled this nice husky walleye on a #5 Firetiger JSR
Each year we get the water temps up in the low 80’s all one has to do to find a good pike population is find cool moving water… And this year it has all come together with normal a river stage and water temps in the low 80’s in the afternoon sun. We went out looking for areas where the shorelines have multiple springs or feeder creeks that have a fair amount of flow of cooler water dumping into the Mississippi River.
Once this is found, throwing spinnerbaits, inline spinners, lipless crankbaits, Rapala BX Minnows,Rapala Shallow Jointed Shad Raps, small daredevils….. well you get the idea.. most times they will eat just about everything 
When throwing crankbaits to the shoreline areas of the Mississippi you just never know what you’re going to catch..
LM Bass, SM Bass, Sheepshead, Catfish, Walleyes, Pike and even some Big Bull Gills like this one pictured..
I set out the other morning trying to see how many different fish I could catch on the Rapala Fiterger JSR and ended up with 6 of the above mentioned fish..
The grass floating down is starting to get bad but we still have several areas that a person can cast or troll…
Summers is almost over and I’m already looking forward to the hard water season..
I have been out trying out some of the new VMC ice tackle and found the gills taking a liking to the Wax Tail Jigs..
I did feel that the hooks on these little guys stood up real well in the rocks !!
Close this out with a pic of dinner the other night…. I tried for the first time putting a fillet of northern. I made my cut from the head to the tail and then took out the rib cage.. With skin and scales left on, I put the meat on the foil on the grill.. 20 minutes on medium heat and this was cooked nicely !!
How do you like to cook your northern pike ?
Have fun out there and remember..
The Tug is the Drug
Very nice report!
Good to see your still catching fish down there Dave.
Some nice ones too!
So Dave. What is your set up for river panfish? I got into some gills on the upper croix this last weekend. Ended up finding a demon spoon on the side of the boat that I just tied onto one of my walleye rods. Just jigged this through he logs and the gils hammered it. It was nice that the light treble would just pull out of a log if hooked with the #10 braid but on the other hand missed most likely 80% of the bites or more.
Do got a rod in the garage rigged up with #4 but thinking I might end up donating a ton of tackle to the wood.
Awesome report from the old Mississippi! Keep up the good work.
Hey Mike
I picked up some of my tips from Blue Fleck.. He and Brett Clark actually..
But mostly what I have been doing is a bullet sinker in front of a barrel swivel.. to a mono leader of about 4-6lb test and then a small jig…some tipped with a piece of crawler or I have been trying out Trigger X plastics…
You can use a medium action or medium light action with a real nice fast tip or extra fast tip…
I have also been trying some real small VMC 9299 Octopus Hooks to try and eliminate the gills swallowing the hook and killing the fish forcing me to keep smaller gills or cutting the line and losing my jigs… and it has worked pretty good
AJ
You have been rock’n those pike up there !!!
I have been fishing the cooler water as well for the pike down here… I would love to be able to tie into some of the monsters you have been catching !!!
Love your detail, very easy and quality reading
nICE write up Dave.
From the looks of those VMC wax tails I’d eat em too! Going to pick some of those bad boys up for the coming winter session. What colors have you been using?
Here are a few of the ones I have been using Bossman… I also have been using Red as well but it’s not in the picture because it is tied onto my line !!!
ecnook, I so love fishing pool # 10, I drive from Cedar Rapids and my favorite is to fish the walleye/sauger bit. Has the fall bite started yet, I know the weeds have become a huge deterent. Can you keep me updated as I’d like to get up to the riving several times in the upcoming months, but also want to make the trip productive when I do come up. As always it would be appriciated.
Wahly
BTW thats one nice looking old marble eyes there…