Mississippi River Pool 4 Fishing Report 11-4-04

Yesterday was my first outing on upper pool 4 since my return from Lake Mille Lacs, which was great by the way , just haven‘t found time to write about it yet. I was excited as a guy could be to be back on moving water………especially with the higher water. With stronger flows and an increase in the water levels since my last trip on pool 4 I was under the assumption the shallow water casting bite would be on fire. It didn’t take long to put that theory to rest. I and my 2 partners for the day found the bite to be really slow, to down right tough for good numbers of fish while beating the banks:(. Other boats I had spoke to said “it was good yesterday”, story of my life! Not for sure what gave those fish lock jaw on Wednesday but they sure were tough to get in the boat in large numbers.

95% of our day was spent down river away from the dam concentrating on shoreline eddies in hopes of finding decent numbers of bigger walleyes away from the dam area. Purple /white tail ringworms from B-Fish’n Tackle was our best bait by days end. Ed (Z-man) Zyga is pictured here with our best fish of the day that he caught on one of those ringworms. I did wear my arm out casting various styles, and colors, of crank baits with a nice 20” eye making it in to the net on a fire tiger Wally Diver made by Cotton Cordell. Thought maybe I was on to something but it just happened to be an isolated incident in this case! We did see about a half dozen decent crappies on plastics as well.

The water clarity is still below normal for this time of year but looks good. Very minimal debris in the river with the higher water levels we are faced with. Guys in the dam area are still reporting in to Everts Resort that good numbers of eater sauger and walleye are being caught daily with an isolated instance of a 5lb plus walleye caught every so often. I am sure Steve will have a report up sometime soon with a 31” eye that was taken this past weekend. The groups of guys I talked to when I was off the water Wednesday evening said "the bite at the dam today was a lot slower than it had been earlier in the week, but we were still able to boat a good number of fish with most of the catch on the short side of the ruler".

Right now it seems the best action on the upper end of the pool is to be found in the dam area. The water temps are still on the warm side for this time of the year. Those fish have yet to go on there fall feeding binge. I don’t look for the "suicide bite" to begin until we see stable water temps in the mid 40’s for a period of time. Shouldn’t be to long with the cooler weather setting upon us. Right now the water is projected to stabilize.

In the next couple of weeks ,the shoreline eddies and current breaks should be the hot spots to look for while casting to the shallows. Those bait fish will be schooled up pretty good with the higher flows and the big mama eye’s won’t be far behind:)!

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