Mississippi River Pool 4 Walleye Report 3-27-05

By dustin_stewart 0

It’s good to be back on the river a couple times a week and have mother nature cooperating for a change:). My past 3 trips on the river have seen some minor changes in the presentation that I have been using to put walleyes in the boat on a consistent basis. Up until around 4 days ago dragging ringworms up or down river was the key to covering water and putting fish in the boat. Now that the river has started to fill it’s banks those eye’s are falling in to the classic current break situations that a river angler has to encounter on a daily basis. Yes, we finally have some current to deal with!! This is a jig casters prime river situation .

With the warmer weather the water clarity is on the down fall at a dramatic rate of speed. All of the tributary streams/rivers on the upper end of the pool are spilling chocolate water in to the system. This has not seemed to effect the bite that drastically. James and I have still been able to pull some nice eye’s out of the dirtier water with some color adjustments on our baits. In the dirtier water the chartreuse colors have prevailed. There are areas that still have good clean water. Firecracker, fire an ice, pro-blue and oyster shell ringworms have done the trick for my boat in the above mentioned water clarities.

Sunday saw the a big change for me on what to look for versus my previous trip last Wednesday.

With the water flows good right now, most of our fish on Sunday came out of 8’ to 15’ of water vs. the real shallow stuff. Reason being? Depending on the area you are targeting the current seams are located at different depths. Concentrating on the seams, no matter what depth they appeared to be along the shoreline stretch we were fishing was the key to get bit. I did not boat a lot of fish in the dead slack water areas like we were seeing in weeks past. I believe with the increase in water flow those fish are constantly on the move harboring in to those little current breaks along the channels edge right now. They stop, rest and feed in an ideal location, then get back on the move to do the one thing they are programmed to do this time of year.

Sunday I spent the day with Darwin Viker. I have fished Darwin a couple of times now and putting fish in the boat has not been a problem for us when we hook up. Only problem we have had is not being able to boat a couple of those bigger walleye. This day just so happened to be our day to make up for the trips with out the big bite. The day was spent looking for that one big bite. Low and behold, we were fortunate enough to have 4 big eyes take a swipe at our plastics offering. Our 4 best fish started with a 7.3lb eye up to the biggest of the trip, that Darwin is pictured above with, going just short of 9lbs. Nice catch Darwin

Patterning a specific color was not easy for us to achieve on this day. Three colors did their damage on the bigger fish. We had 2 big fish on a pro-blue ringworm, one on a fire an ice ringworm and one of these mamas was fooled in to taking a firecracker 5”k-grub. 1/8oz black precision heads did the trick. We took fish on both sand and rock this day . Two of our better fish came on rock, and two came off of sand. Like I mentioned above, the depth was not as important as the location of the current seam. The 7:30 to 1:00 time frame was good for us, after 1:00 the bite was slow going for us.

Spring is here and the fish are bitin!

See ya on the river!

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dustin_stewart

When not at work I'm busy playing fishing guide on pools 3 and 4 of the Mississippi River.I will fish Lake Pepin but the bite has to be really good on the lake to get me off of moving water.

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  4. Now that what I like to see. Fish are biting and the river is acting like a river. Thanks for the report and pics Dusty. Real nice looking fish. Spring is here.

    Thanks, Bill

  5. Dang! All these awesome fishing reports are killing me. I’ve got a trip lined up with James in a couple weeks and can hardly stand the wait! I keep catching myself looking at those pics of all these hog mama walleyes with a stupid grin on my face. I think I need a cold shower.

  8. Yup, with ringworms….. .

    Were you out on Sunday as well Scott? I never saw you if you were. There was a lot more boats out than I thought there would be. Saw some guys catch some fish handling but jut those pesky saugers .

  10. Handlining ringworms You never know!

    I did not fish Sunday. All 3 trolling motor batteries were dead on the Ranger I was using that day so we were kind of forced to handline all day, which was fine with me. Otherwise we would have been pitching I am sure. We tried Saturday AM without a trolling motor, that lasted about 2 minutes

    Looks like we should have stuck around another day. Nice Fish

  12. Nice fish Dustin. Glad to hear pitchin was the game. I was fishing next to you in the afternoon in a camo duck boat pitchin on the rip-rap. Were you down river in the morning picking up the bigger ones?

  13. Ranger29=Cal=Dead Batteries

    Thanks for letting me use you boat, I am picking it back up in about an hour. Everything looked good with the Evinrude

  14. Nice fish Dustin! I was planning on being on the river this weekend but Al’s Speciality called and they have my new
    E-TEC ready to install. So my boat will be down. Save some big ones for me!

  19. Dustin,
    Yep, bad timing on my part again, just got back from week and a half trip to CA. looked at a couple of reports this morning and just couldn’t take the time to read and drool all day, so am here late, drooling. Wow great fish, and report. Somethings just never change around HERE: Dustin and James putting themselves and CLIENTS and terrific fish, day after day. Congrats.
    Jack…

  21. Hi Alan,

    First off welcome to the site

    I put the info you are looking for right in my report. Ringworms have been very good to me

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