Mississippi River Upper Pool 4 Report 7-16-06

The walleye bite on the upper end of pool 4 remains good for numbers of fish with the occasional big walleye in the mix. My boat is still seeing it’s best action dragging jigs tipped with bait. Others are seeing some fish on cranks as well but the numbers are not as good as the bait bite has been for me over the last couple of weeks.

With the very low flows and main river water temps pushing low 80’s, look for areas with higher flow to make good ambush areas. Mid river humps, sharp turns in the channel edge, mid river clam beds, bottle neck areas and outside bends in the river with rip rap are good bets right now to have increased current flow on them. With the increase in current flow, active walleyes that reside in the upper stretches of the river will key in on areas like the above to get their next meal.

Best jig colors for my boat have predominately been blue, orange or black. One of these three colors will put fish in the boat on any given day. Orange seems to work the magic when the sun is shining bright, black when the clouds covering the sun, and blue just plain works all the time Depths have varied for me depending on the areas I am targeting. I have caught nice walleyes dragging in depths as deep as 16’ and shallow as 2’ in the last couple of weeks.

This past Saturday I had the privilege to share my boat with a couple of good river rat friends, Randy and Rob Stevens . Our goal for the day was to try and boat a big walleye for the in-depthangling.com get together in hopes of winning a nice prize. This event was hosted by Everts Resort. All three of us had a 1 mile stretch of river that has proven to produce big walleye year round for all of us, we unanimously agreed on this stretch of river to pound on for the day. By days end we were able to boat the 1st and 2nd place fish in the walleye category with an 8.5lb walleye and a 7.1lb eye . Randy is pictured above with the best fish of the day and I am pictured here as well with the other big eye. In addition to these better fish we saw some good action on a few other low 20” eye’s. Right away at our first stop Rob was able to boat a couple of nice eyes casting cranks. Once the crank bite slowed we dragged jigs with very good results. It’s been a while since I have shared a boat with you guys. It was definitely a fun time on the water and I look forward to doing it again. I hope your feeling better Rob

The water clarity is the best I can ever remember seeing it on the upper end of the river right now in mid summer . I could see an orange jig about 16“-18”down. The last couple of years that we have had low water the river was disturbingly dirty. I attribute some of the great walleye bite we have been seeing on the upper end this summer to the cleaner water.

The largemouth and smallmouth seem to be active as well on the upper end with several anglers reporting action on the bass bite. Not sure on the overall quality but have seen some 3lb plus bass boated right around Everts Resort.

See ya on the river!