Mississippi River Pool 4 Walleye Report 10-11-04

I finally had the chance to get back on the river this past Thursday after an 18 day absence from moving water! My first thought was……”man the water is dirty”. At first, I thought maybe it was just because the last place I had floated a boat was up on Lake Mille Lacs, but there was no doubt the water clarity was below normal for this time of year.

On Thursday this past week I spent the day alone working rip rap areas with ringworms and K-grubs. I didn’t find the bite to be wide spread for me but found a few walleye willing to cooperate. Biggest fish of the day hit the scales at 7lbs caught on a 3-way rig/bait. I had another good eye hitting the tape at 25”caught on a pearl blue S/P 5“ K-grub as well. Purple ringworms with white or chartreuse tail took the top honors for the most fish on this day in the 16” to 20” range but the 5” K-grub did the damage on the other big fish I brought to the boat. I saw a bulk of the action right as the bait would come off the bank in the shallower water but those 2 big girls were holding a bit deeper in the 10’ to 15’ depths right at the base of the rip rap section I was working.

On Friday I shared my boat with good friend James Holst. We started our day on the bottom part of the river looking for areas with good numbers of better fish away from the crowds in the dam area. I stuck it out with the plastics and James tossed around a blue/silver fat rap. The above walleye was the first fish of our day caught on that fat rap. After an hour or so we found ourselves down on the top side of the lake casting cranks to the shoreline rocks with minimal success on the eye’s . We had one 17” eye and a smorgasbord of other things. James tied in to this nice smallie he is pictured here with and a crappie that was caught on a hair jig. We also saw multiple smaller largemouth and small mouth sitting right on the banks waiting for a quick meal. Later in the day we found a productive trolling bite in the WI back channel using #5 shad raps in 4’ to 7’ of water. Orange craw was our best producing bait on this day.

On Saturday James and I spent the early part if our day casting shoreline rip rap on the main river. The rip rap bite was off compared to 2 days prior, but we did put one fish taping out at 22” in the boat on the above mentioned K-grub and another 17” fish on a ringworm in the same area. Once the rip rap bite died for us, we made a move to our trolling area and quickly tied in to an 18” fish. We then experienced a lull in the little action we had found but decided to stick it out and wait for um to bite. After a good 3 hours in this area we boated another 22” eye and 2 more eaters to close out our day.

The best area for good number of fish with a bigger eye in the mix that I have found, or heard of, would be at the dam right now. Steve at Everts Resort has been posting that guys are seeing fish daily in that area. I have heard of some good crank casting bites down in the lake along the shoreline rip rap as well. In what areas you ask? Well, not sure myself but have heard isolated instances of good fish being boated on point no point, the pine creek area, and the rocks below Bay City.

Over all I found the bite on the river as a whole to be quite slow for good numbers of fish during the last 3 days I spent back on the mighty Miss. Right now the best bite on the upper end of the pool seems to be the dam area!

I will only have a few more chances to hit the river again before I am off to lake Mille Lacs. I do still have a couple of openings for the night trolling bite on this magnificent body of water if anyone is interested?

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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