The big walleye bite on Pool 2 remains to be quite solid this past week with lots of better than average sized fish giving thrill to anglers willing to play hide and seek on the wingdams. Wingdams has been my main focus this time of year for producing quality fish. If you have never experienced a walleye hitting a slow methodically presented jig in shallow water, than you are definitely missing some of the most intense bites a walleye angler will ever have the opportunity to observe. No more of that “Was that a bite or the bottom?” thoughts running through your head. This is the bite I wait all season for and we are upon it right now as we speak!
Ben Osmond (aka…Beno) and his buddy Eric Williams joined me yesterday for a full day of pitching jigs on Pool 2. We started about 6:00am and ran to a spot upriver and started pitching jigs to a shallow wingdam. Low and behold we got bit right off the bat on the first cast with a 3/16th oz BFT unpainted Precision jig head coupled with a 4” YUM ribworm in the cotton candy color. We pulled 8 fish out of this spot before the sun hit the horizon to give some heat to a frosty morning. The three of us proceeded t oh op around from spot to spot the next couple hours producing a fish here and there, but the pace fell off the mark at about 9:00am. As the day went on we continued to work our way further and further downriver hoping for a couple good fish to show themselves.
At about noon, we found our way downriver to a about 8 wingdams that have been producing some quality fish for me the last week or so and I made the decision to work these spots for the rest of the afternoon jumping around from spot to spot hoping to be in the right place at the right time for a couple big walleyes with the feedbag on. After about 10 minutes on each spot, it either gave way to a couple real beauties or a couple mean bites that we never got a chance to see the fish on the other end due to a short bite. This persistence paid off for us as we boated 4 fish over the 26” mark with a bunch of smaller fish mixed into the afternoon to keep us alert. The 4-1/2” YUM Croaker tails took top honors for days big fish catches once again. Fishing these big profile plastics on BFT’s ¼ oz unpainted Precision jigheads has bee na winning combinations for several weeks for me now. I will be the first to admit that there are other options for playing the numbers game, but if you are looking for that one big fish for the day….I have no better solution that pitching a Croaker tail!
The best bite however appeared to be at the both lowlight periods of the day yesterday giving way to a quick 45 minute flurry of action at dusk period and then the bite appeared to go quiet for us as we decided to make out way back to the dock. At days end, we tallied up about 25+ fish with about 5-6 fish hitting the tape at over 25"! Just wanted to say thanks to Ben and Eric for spending the day in my boat and look forward to having your company again some day! Good luck to both of you on the rest of the open water season on Pool 2!
Look for additional pics to follow this report!
Here are a couple more photos from this past week.
This 28″ fish came during the cold rain last Friday afternoon pitching a chatruese JimmyD’s weenie hair jigs. This good hair jig bite should pick up very soon.
Here is another nice wingdam fish that fell victim to a Croaker Tail…
Steve, glad to see the success, unfortunately we had tough times on Saturday on Pool 2. We fished from the Hastings Dam/Spring Lake area all the way back to Willie’s harbor. Hitting quite a few wingdams along the way pitching hair and plastics. Alot of water to cover and I’m guessing the best advice is to keep working. Any additional advice is appreciated!
Nice fish Steve. Is ti just the eletric chicken croaker you are finding bigger fish on or are other colors working also?
8 fish off of one dam. Thats pretty good. Once and awhle we can manage 3 or 4 but after that even the bumps from missed fish disapear. Sounds like I need to get there earlyer in the morning.
It was a little on the slow side again for me today. Sometimes more time was spent trying to anchor on the dams than was spent fishing them. I hate wind. Took 2 fish right away this morning on a modified white K grub then it was noon before I found 4 more. All where taken on the white K grub but one. Largest taped out at 25.5″ and very fat again.
I would imagine those 28″ fish you are catching Steve must be hitting close to the 10# mark. Joe had a 22″ fish weigh close to 4# on sunday.
Great report as usual Steve!
I will definitely contact you about exploring Pool 2 next season…gotta give it a try!
tmack,
Finding a herd of walleyes on one single wingdam has been pretty tough for me so far, but that should be changing here very soon as the flows decline and we will find more and more fish stacking up on the leading wingdams in a series. Right now, I have been finding one or two here and there. I have been spending about 15-20 minutes per spot and then keeping a move on. Usually the fish will show themselves within the first half dozen casts or so, and if not I keep right on moving to the next spot. Finding a good milk route of spots is something that takes a little bit of time, but once you do you are able to up your odds for finding fish in a hurry.
Good luck!
With the current flow we have on the river right now, I have been finding all of my fish from the middle to the inside of the wingdams. The tips right now are not producing for me with any consistency.
Plastics and hair jigs have been my approach as well as what you are doing. The bigger profiled Croaker tails have seemed to do the trick for the better sized fish as of late. Hope this helps a bit!
Mike,
Sounds like you are getting the hang of the wingdam fishing this year!
The Chartruese 4-1/2″ Croaker Curltail has probably been the most consistent color for my boat over this past week. Most wingdams I have been fishing the Croaker curltail on a BFT 1/4oz precision jig head for best results. We are starting to see fish stacking up in certain areas now which is typical this time of year. This is when we start seeing double digits coming from single spots!! Can’t wait!
The weight of the fish this fall have been very chunky. All the 26″-28″ this past week have all gone anywhere from 7#-9-1/2# on the scales. Very healthy to see! Also, we are seeing a great population of 15″-18″ all of the sudden on the last couple trips mixed in with the bigger fish. Appears that there is yet another strong year class up and coming for the future!
See you on the water Mike!
Tom,
I’ll save a seat open for you whenever you finally decide to hit Pool 2 up here! I think you will enjoy the quality fish it has to offer.
Thanks Steve! My GPS mapping does contain all the wingdams and exactly matches those laid out by the nav chart link you provided, so that helps. I found quite a few wingdams to be nonexistent or when I moved close or over them there was no change in depth. Others there were dramatic changes or it was obvious from the flow of water or ripple. Are alot of wingdams nonexistent? (Again I was fishing south). Do you guide through December and if so, do you still have openings during the week?
tmack,
I am not sure of the accuracy that your information on the GPS chip is to the relation to the structure. I have seen one chip so far that had some pool 2 info on there and that was limited to the amount of dams that actually exist. As for how many are non-existent? Not sure, but I have not found all that many that have been removed or changed from the Navigational Link that I provided. In fact, I can count on one hand how many I have excountered that have been removed or changed since the creation of that map. Just my observation. So far, the Navigational Link appears to be the most accurate that I have seen. I would be interested in seeing the one you have.
One key note I should bring up as well when fishing south. Most of these wingdams are deeper than we think on top, so the deflection of water or indication of a wingdam are alot of times not obvious at all and with a north wind, they can be impossible to witness without running over them first. Some of the spots I have been fishing have been anywhere from 6-10 feet on top of the wingdam way south. These are much different than most wingdams. From what I can tell is that these are mostly silted over.
Openings?
I do have weekday openings if you interested. Shoot me a PM and we can discuss what dates work out for you!