It has been a while since my last report. Not that I have not been fishing, because I have, other things have kept me busy and off the computer more than I would like to be. Now on with the fishing!
July 7th 2005. Upper pool 4 over the last couple of weeks has been, shall we say…….a mess, very inconsistent for numbers of decent fish. Fish can and are being caught, but not in huge numbers like we are used to seeing this time of year. Catching short fish has not been an issue on most days, boating 20 to 30 legal fish in a day has not been a common occurrence what so ever. Why do you ask? The river has been really dirty the last few weeks. Once the river looks fishable we were seeing t-storms up North keeping the muddy water in the system. The biggest obstacle we have had to contend with over the last week is the tuna boat traffic. The early am hours have been my best bite before the big boats start running the river in full force. Once they get going, the river looks like chocolate milk all over again. The bite you were on just falls apart once the water clarity suffers from the above.
Best presentation has been trolling crank baits. With the dirtier water the extra vibration helps some of those active fish find your offering. The game for me has been to cover lots of water jumping from spot to spot trying to pick off a couple active fish then off we go to another area. I have slowed down and fished bait in the areas that have been giving up fish on cranks with very little success. Firetiger colored cranks have been best for my boat with other colors not getting touched on most days. Blue/silver has been my next best color. Wally Divers, #5 regular and jointed shads have all put fish in the boat over the last couple of weeks
All of my time has been spent from the head of the Lake up to Everts Resort. I have not been on Lake Pepin in almost 3 weeks. The guys I have spoke to that have been fishing the lake are reporting just about the same results as the upper river for consistency of the bite. From what I have heard the water on the southern part of the lake has started to clean up and fish are starting to get caught from Bogus Bay down the bottom end of the Lake on more of a regular basis in the last couple of days. Might be something to check out if the water on the river does not clean up.
July 7th 2005. Yesterday I decided to change up my scenery a bit and locked thru to Pool 3 for the day. I concentrated my efforts on the upper end of the pool fishing wing dams. My thinking was the water would be cleaner because of the St. Croix river. In the am hours I was right, the water looked great on the upper part of that pool but once 10:00 rolled around the big boats started running the water clarity started to suffer. Not quite as bad as pool 4 but it definitely got cloudy.
I was only able to boat a one man limit of eye’s off the dams but they were all quality fish. Smallest fish of the day was just over 20”. My best two walleye’s of my Pool 3 outing are the first two fish pictured in the report. 1/4oz orange or black jigs tipped with leeches took all my fish today. I never caught a walleye casting cranks or drowning crawlers on the dams. Wing dams with 18’ of water of more surrounding them were the best on this particular day. The fish wanted a lighter jig worked in to the face of the dams on this day. I worked 3-way rigs and heavier jigs from the face of the wing dam back towards the boat V.S letting my jig drift in to the dam with poor results.
This was my first adventure to pool 3 this year. I seem to only get 1 or 2 outings up that way in a season but I do plan on spending a large amount of time up that way in the coming months trying to learn that pool better.
That’s all for now,
See ya on the river! 
NICE FISH! OBVIOUSLY THEY SNUCK THROUGH THE ROLLERS WHILE THEY WERE UP FROM POOL 4
Dean,
As much as the rollers have been up this year……. it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if all the big walleyes vacated upper pool 4 for 3
Hey! I need to see your Pool 3 Permit!
Nice fish!
Tuck
Dustin, Nice fish and report!
Usually, when I try to fish the wingdams on pool 3 on weekends I end up re-anchoring about every 10 minutes to stay on the same wing dam due to the boat traffic. Thanks for giving up another option to try, casting a jig and a leech. Hopefully the water drops back down so we drags jigs again. I was looking forward to doing that again this year, it’s a fun way to fish.
I’m with ya Pat on the jig draggin. I have done quite a bit of it in the back waters on the upper part of pool 4 but the cranks have still seen a better bite for me. If the water was a bit cleaner I think that presentation would prevail in areas with less current flow right now. With the way the water levels are on the fall it shouldn’t be long and the draggin bite will be very good
Nice fish Dustin! Glad to see that you have been getting out…. I was begining to wonder
I figured people were going to start wondering why I have not been reporting but figured there were enough guys on staff for pool 4 to help fill the void in my absence
.Dean from Everts did a good job keeping everyone informed about what’s been coming in to the resort.Other than Dean I guess the rest of them have not been out fishing or have been as busy as I have with things when off the water 
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Anyway it’s good to be back in the saddle. I should have a current report up every 2-3 weeks from here till January
The dragging bite was solid today. Excellent in the AM and slower in the afternoon but good overall. Largest fish taped 23.5″ with 3 or 4 others over 20″. We never caught a single sheepshead, catfish, etc. which is very odd for this time of year. The new dragging jig prototypes Koonce sent me ROCKED and will be a nice new addition to their line-up. We went right through the trees and rocks without a problem. A nice medium blue was the hot jig color today.
Hit pool 3 again today
. Started the morning trolling rip rap with a couple of 17″eyes and a 22″ eye. These fish were brought to the boat on wally divers and #5 shad raps in the firetiger pattern. Since I am trying to learn more areas on this pool left this spot and headed for the wing dams. Fished 4 hours on the dams with bait and cranks with no takers 
, only sheepies 
Once the wing dams bombed for me I started trolling jointed shad raps in 4′ to 8′ of water with some nice fish making a showing. I found one little area that held a bunch of nice fish today. The best 2 fish of the day are pictured here. Besides these 2 beauties the 20″-21″ were very cooperative as well on this spot. At one point I doubled netting a 21″ eye, once I looked over at my other rod it was loaded up with another fish. I still had the 21″ fish in the net when I got the other fish to the boat. I wish I would have saw this rod get bit first because this was a 6lb-8lb fish
. I tried to get it in the net with the 21″ eye but the hooks got caught on the outside of the net and that big eye went bye-bye 
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Trolling speeds were fairly fast today with 2.2mph to 3mph GPS up river. 4 of my nicer fish came trolling down river at 3.5mph
Upper pool 4 is in good shape right now. Looks like all I had to do was write a report saying the fishing was kind of off to get them to bite more constantly. James has done well on upper 4 the last couple of days dragging jigs and today he had a fairy good trolling bite. The water looks cleaner and is still on the drop. As long as we don’t see a large amount of rain any time soon the river should stay in pretty good shape.
WOW Dustin,
Those are 2 beauties
Sounds like a good day to me, and looks even better
dave
I had that exact same thing happen to me last week where the hooks got caught on the outside of the net. What made me feel bad was it was my nephews first walleye and was about 4#’s.
Did’nt bother him though he’s 10 and said as long as he reeled it into the boat and got to see it, It was caught.
Nice fish, pics, and great In-Depth report on Pool 3 Dustin.
Hope to see more of the same. If you see me out there, stop and say hi.
Hit pool 3 again today
. The trolling bite was really good from 8:00am to 10:30am. A good number of walleye made it to the boat this moring, best fish was 21″ on cranks today. I never caught a fish on a firetiger crank bait today but the perch pattern wally diver and perch colored #5 jointed raps did the damage. I thought it was kind of odd that nothing would hit my firetiger cranks today but I was not going to try and force feed them 
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Once the trolling bite died on me in the area I was targeting I focused on the wing dams. Only 1 fish off the dams today but it was a good one. This fished weighed 8.4lbs. Got her on a 3/8oz orange jig/leech. I fished about 12 dams today. Either I am picking the wrong ones or there is just not a large number of fish on them right now.
I must say it was quite warm out there today. Not much for wind to keep a guy cool.
Nice fish Dustin. We hit the wingdams on pool 2 today and only found on 18″ eye. Not much going on up there also. Lost a nicer fish this casting a bomber to a dam. It felt pretty nice but came off after a couple of good head shakes. Even the fish we caught had barely one hook in it.
You look a little cooked in that photo.
I think that was the first day all year I have fished with out my hat on because it was so hot out.My forehead and other areas on the head that are lacking “thickness of hair” are burnt pretty good today
Dustin, I hit some wing dams on pool 3 last night and couldn’t find any eyes. Used mainly crawlers and made a few casts with k grubs. I caught some sheephead, smallies and those goofy shad-looking fish. I did get one sauger trolling rip rap. I had a couple of good hits on the k grub but did not get them hooked. For whatever reason they are not thick on the wing dams right now. Glad the fish you found was a nice one!