Mississippi River Upper Pool 4 Report 7-5-04

On Sunday I finally had the chance to get back on the mighty Miss, it has been 11days since I have had the chance to fish pool 4 . As you read in my last report I experimented on pool 3 last time I hit the water. I am excited to get back up to the pool 3 area and learn more but the boat traffic I would have had to deal with on this busy holiday weekend kept me in the less traveled areas on the upper end of pool 4.

I very seldom get to fish with my dad, but this weekend he was able to make the trip . With the water levels back in the river banks, we started our day trolling the main channel rip rap. This is one of my favorite big walleye presentations during the summer months. You will not get a lot of fish with this presentation but when you do they are usually over the 5lb mark. I guess I should re-phrase that last sentence! You will get a lot of fish but most of them will be those dreaded sheep head. Those darn sheepies are stacked on the rip rap right now, you will have to weed through many of them if using this trolling application . My dad caught the above pictured walleye on a #5 orange craw Shad Rap along the second shoreline we targeted on Sunday morning . This was the only walleye we pulled of the rip rap this day before the big boats started to tear up the river.

The rest of our morning was spent jumping around to various spots away from the crowds looking for another big bite but all we could get was short fish. Once we decided the crank bite wasn’t going to be the hottest technique to put good numbers of decent fish in the boat on this day, we switched it up and dragged jigs in the Bay City flats area. The wind was howling out of the North making it almost impossible to drag jigs with the boat control needed in this particular area. I know the fish were there because we saw other boats getting plenty of action 3-way rigging bait. I had left my 3-way rods in the truck so that wasn’t an option for me . I got a hot tip from a buddy about an area that I wanted to check out so off we headed.

The next area we targeted had a bit less wind that would allow us to drift with the boat control needed. The change in location was a good decision on our part! The rest of the day we saw “non-stop action” dragging jigs tipped with leeches or crawlers in 2’ to 5’ of water . The action was good enough that we headed back to Everts Resort to get my mom and the gal so they could enjoy the fun as well. Both baits caught fish hand over fist but overall I would have to give the crawlers a thumbs up . The area we were targeting was only about a 50yard drift. If we made a drift with out getting bit, the next drift we would switch up to leeches and get a few more fish that would not go on the crawlers. We did this the rest of the day switching back and forth between the 2 baits. A majority of our walleye ran in the 17” to 19“” class but we did have 6 fish dragging the same area in the 20“ to 23“ range as well . Orange or black jigs were the predominant colors.

From reading the forums it looks like the 4th of July weekend outings were pretty good for those that ventured out on the big river. Good to see the fishery in great shape. This will be my last report for about 12-14days,other commitments will keep me busy and off the river in the short term. Keep the info flowing on the forums so I have a good starting point on my next adventure !

See ya’ on the river!

Dustin Stewart

In-Depth Angling Pro-Staff

IN-Depth Angling Video Productions

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Moving Waters Guide Coalition

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