Mississippi River Pool 4 Fishing Report 2-3-05

What has felt like the “endless winter” over the last 2 months has finally come to a close for a few days with signs of Spring on the horizon. Time and weather have been a burden for me keeping me away from the river on a regular basis. Even when I have had the availability to hit the river it seems like mother nature saw me coming, in return, she made sure it was colder than a deep freeze out there. Wednesday was the first time I have been on the river more than 3 hours in one outing in the last 3 weeks. That’s just what I needed to put some of that cabin fever behind me.

I spent the morning hours with my good friend Swany. The beginning of our day found us casting ringworms to some shallow sand areas with good results. We boated over a 2 man limit of walleye in short order with most of our catch running in the 18” to 21” class along with the big mama eye that Swany is pictured here with. He caught this fish on a 1/8oz precision jig tipped with a purple/white tail ringworm. Nice fish bud!

Once the early bite slowed for us we proceeded to jump around from spot to spot in hopes of finding another school of cooperative eye’s. We were able to boat a couple more nice fish jumping from spot to spot but the action was not fast and furious. Right around 10:30am the walleye bite went to down right tough for my boat, we encountered a 4 hour lull in the walleye action before things started to pick up again around 2:30. By this time Mr. James Holst had made his way to the river and jumped in for an afternoon outing.

In the later afternoon hours James and I found some eye’s willing to cooperate in 11’ to 14’ depths. The pro-blue color saw most of the action by days end on the eye’s, with a couple fish taken on oyster shell and firecracker also. Oyster shell paddle tails coaxed a couple of sauger in to the boat targeting those shallower depths as well. The eye’s in the afternoon ran on the smaller side than the fish we had brought to the boat in the morning hours. The afternoon catch ran in the 16” to 18” size range.

While talking to other anglers that day I had a lot of mixed reports. I heard anything from “the bite is good” to” it’s a tough go“. Some of the anglers I spoke with said they saw a good sauger bite in the morning hours but the early afternoon was a tough bite.

The fish are there and willing to bite if you put your time in. The bite will gradually progress in to a more of a consistent bite the closer we get to Spring. If the nice weather sticks around for a couple of weeks, I will keep the reports coming with more detail of course. The more time I can spend on the river the more info I will have to share.

See ya on the river!