Mississippi River Upper Pool 4 Report 8-5-04

My reports are starting to sound like a broken record! Not a thing has changed for my boat to put good numbers of quality walleye in the boat over the last couple of months. I am still dragging jigs in 2’ to 11’ of water with good results. This has been one of the most consistent summers of fishing in my opinion since the year 2001 when we had the raging high water. It isn’t to often you can hit the water 2 times a week and put close to, or over, a 3 man limit of fish in the boat on a one day outing. Most of the walleye are running in the 17” to 21” class right now with a couple of walleye on almost every outing in the 23” to 25” class. I have not had a lot of those big mid summer piggies in the 26” plus range make it to the boat in the last couple of weeks on the upper end of the pool but the 23” to 25” fish are keeping me satisfied for now. But I do need a good fix, and need it soon. Guess I’m going to have spend a day and look for one of those big girls here real soon. Right now it’s just hard to pull away from such consistent bite dragging jigs.

Almost 2 weeks ago this Sunday I shared my boat with Brian Lyons and his wife Linda. Brian is trying to learn more areas on the upper end of the pool for those mid summer eye’s so our day was spent jumping around to different locals. We only fished one area on this day with out a legal fish. The good thing about jumping around on this day was it seemed to be the key for us to keep the action going. We never took more than 4 legal walleye out of one single spot we fished:(. Once we pulled in to a new location it wasn’t long and one of us 3 would get bit with a decent walleye. Pulling up and making another drift was the sensible thing to do but rarely did it payoff for us on this day with repeat biters in the same area. We had high hopes for a big bite but the biggest fish we saw on this day was a couple of 21” eye’s and one 22” to 23” fish that we never took the time to get a snap shot of. Thanks again you two!

The first picture above is of Mr. James Holst. James jumped in my boat for about 45minutes last Saturday in hopes of hooking in to some eaters for the fish fry prior to getting set up for the in-depthangling.com get together. This was the first walleye of the short outing, must have had a good guide to put you on that fish in short order! This fish was caught dragging a blue jig along one of the main river sand bars in 10’ of water. Nice fish James.

On Wednesday of this week I shared my boat with Tom Beirl and his good friend Bill, both are from the Covington Indiana area. As some of you may recall, last year I did a guide trip giveaway on the message board, Tom was the winner of that trip. Just so happened we could not get together to run the trip until this week. Our day started out with some good action dragging jigs like I have been, only difference was the sun was not out and about shining bright like it has been on so many of my recent outings. With the darker conditions we were faced with I opted to tie one black jig on instead of running more of the brighter colors like orange. Good decision on my part! That black jig tipped with a leech was the hot set-up for a short bit. I never did catch a legal fish on an orange jig this day and believe me I tried. Blue jigs ended up being just as good for us once I had the confidence to get rid of the orange jig and stick with the darker colors. By 11:30am we had over a 2 man limit of eaters along with two better fish that Tom and I are pictured here with. Once we had some dinner all lined up we decided to pull cranks thru our best area for about 45 minutes to see if we could get one of those big mama walleye to come out and play. We never had a walleye make it to the boat in this area on the cranks. Instead of going back to bait I wanted to try our luck at trolling rip rap since I have not had the chance to do so yet this year. We caught lots of big fish only problem was they were all the wrong species. We only saw one walleye about 18” make it to the boat trolling rip rap with another, what looked to be a 20” fish, that came un-buttoned behind the boat out of net range. Tom and Bill thanks again and I hope the rest of your week stay at Everts Resort is a good one.

Leeches were best for me on my last outing but don’t leave home with out the crawlers. The walleye’s prefrence has changed daily

One thing I have noticed on recent outings is the water clarity on the upper end of the pool. It’s the best I have ever seen it mid summer, I can actually see all the fish in my live well! Right now you can see an orange jig about 12” down in the water column. I have no idea why the water is so clean right now for this time of year. Only thing that would make sense is the lack of rain and the lower flows.

It’s getting to be that time of year when the smallies get stacked up pretty good along the rip rap areas with some better flow on them. I have not personally taken part in this bite as of yet but have talked to guys getting some nice bass on spinner baits and cranks. Guys trolling cranks out in front of Everts are seeing some Northern Pike action as well. I have not heard of any real big slimers making it to the boat but pike in the 4lb to 8lb range seem to be a common occurrence.

I’ll 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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