Mississippi River Pool 4 Report 9-13-04

My last 5 trips to the mighty river were spent on the lower end of the river fishing the wingdams around Wabasha:). This is a section of the river I have not spent much time on, the upper end of the pool has always captured my attention. The bite on the wingies was not fast and furious for me on any one outing but the quality of the catch was magnificent 4 of the 5 days I played around on the southern end of the pool. I had been averaging 7 to 12 fish an outing with at least 2 fish over the 23” mark on up to 27”. A couple of days I saw 3 fish over the 23” mark with a majority of the fish I brought to the boat being in the 21“ class. The quality of the fish in that area is magnificent but the action is a bit slower than dragging jigs/trolling cranks on the upper end or the lake right now. The bite went down hill for me on Sunday and turned bitterly sour! But you can bet I’ll be spending some more time down that way this fall trying to learn more of that area.

I took fish off the wingdams on both cranks and live bait rigs with a majority of my bigger fish coming off of bait. Lighter weights in the 1/16oz size on up to 1/4oz, depending on the depth of the dam worked in my favor. I saw much better success on the bigger fish when I was able to sweep my presentation in to the face of the wing dam and let it roll up over the top. Another technique that was very effective, and put some bigger fish in the boat as well ,was to throw a really light jig over the dam and work it back up over slowly walking it down the face of the dam. I found those 2 presentation to work better for me V.S fishing heavier and dragging my rig straight back to the boat. I had to drag the heavier stuff on the windier days I was in that area and those were the days I experienced a slower bite with the size and numbers of my fish both being effected. About 80% of my quality fish came right up on top of the wing dam in 2’ to 6’ of water. I was not successful in pulling good fish right off the tips of the dams. Once I found the fish to be right on top a majority of the time, I didn’t spend much time out on the tips.

Rapala RS Shad Raps in the #7 size and #5 fat raps in the Perch pattern were the 2 best producers on the crank bait bite. We saw a good half dozen pike and some big smallies in the 18” to 19.5” class on bait as well as cranks.

The 3 above pictures are of my dad. He was more than happy to jump in the boat one day last week to get a change of pace from the upper end of the pool as well. This day we saw 3 fish over 23” on up to 25”. Nice eyes dad(even though I caught 2 of them:o)! The other 3 days spent in that area was alone, or with out a camera, unfortunately some of those big mamas eyes didn’t have a chance to be on camera:(.

This past weekend I heard reports of guys doing well on numbers of fish trolling cranks out on the lake around Maidon Rock, Hoksila, and the Maple Springs area. A good mix of Sauger and Walleye were the reports I received. Not sure on depths or style of baits that were used. One guy told me that the white glass shad raps were good to them.

I will only be on the river a couple more times this Sept then it’s off to Lake Mille Lacs for the full moon night trolling bite. Let’s just hope we get some cooler weather moving in so those water temps start to drop in the low 50’s.

Until next time………I’ll see ya’ on the river!

Dustin Stewart

In-Depth Angling Pro-Staff

IN-Depth Angling Video Productions

My Photo Album

[email protected]

Moving Waters Guide Coalition

Ph.507-421-2346