Mississippi River Fishing – Pool 8 Mixed Bag

By bret_clark 0

My morning started off meeting Mike C and Jake at the 7th St landing around 5:30am. Jake fishes the Southeastern Lakes in Wisconsin, he is up visiting Mike and wanted to get a little more exposure on the river. We started off for gills doing the same thing that has been working for me the last few weeks. Picture here is Mike and Jake anchored up.

Armed with a 1/32oz jig (orange/yellow), slip bobber and, fishing wing dams is still producing nice gills. The trick is getting anchored above the wing dam and getting the depth of your jig so it just cruises over the rock. There was 3FOW on top of the wing dam we were fishing. The fish we found were right on the top of the rock. We also caught and few Mooneyes, Bass, Channel Cat, and even a gar. It was a lot of fun on the light tackle.

After putting a few gills in the cooler I decided to give trolling a try. I headed for a slough with some good current considering low water. I started off pulling a crawler harness following the edge carved out by the current and picked up a few more Channel cats hanging out in 15-20FOW. They hit the crawler a ton. Then I started pulling some Raplas and that’s when I thought for sure I had my wall hanger.

After a long game of Tug of War I got the first glimps of the creature. What a beauty carp! To make it all the more fun, the girl was hooked in the back. Oh well, no wall hanger but she did test some tackle

The river is fun right now. Things should only start getting better. I’m sure it’s not to far off and the walleyes will start picking up on pool 8 also! I found water temps of 76 and 78 degrees.

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  3. My kinda gills guy -thanks fer the heads up…That cat was a good eat’in size too
    Guess I’ll try in the morning.

  4. Thanks for the report Bret, I had some success straight-lining gills off the rocks last weekend, but did not think of the slip bobber presentation on the wingdams. I will be back in the area next week and will give it a try.

  5. Mike captured a shot of the battle in action That carp did not want to leave the bottom.

    One other note, I also found some gills in an eddy at the shore line. The end of the wing dam was exposed causing the eddy. I was fishing deeper just letting the bobber do a circle in the current Just another thing to look for on wing dams.

  6. Nice report Bret
    It is about time you got Mike C out on the water again I was beginning to think his boat was being used for a flower pot

  8. I was glad to see his boat still floats Wats

    Mack, I haven’t had time to do half the things I would like to have been doing this summer Sounds like I might get out one night this week to chase cats. Jake is wanting to give it a try so, Mike and I are going to see what we can do to make it happen. It is something I have been missing very much!

  9. Quote:

    Nice report Bret
    It is about time you got Mike C out on the water again I was beginning to think his boat was being used for a flower pot

    You have no idea how much work it is to get all that dirt out of the boat Then, where do you transplant all the flowers

    Thanks for your concern buddy Wats

  11. Bret, nice report. After reading it, I decided to fish some dams for those gills. Had not been fishing much lately, so was nice to get out. Wow, had a great time last evening. Not all the big boats out running around so made for a good time. Caught alot of gills, kept 13 for a meal and the smallmouth bass were everywhere. Most were on the small size, but stll alot of them.–John

  12. Was out around the rain drops over the weekend, found lots of gills in the rocks. Was using wax worms on 1/16 jigs with a 1 1/2 tube skirt. Pink tubes and white jigs seemed to work the best. Sorry, no pictures to post.

  13. Thanks for the report and pics Bret. Nothing like multispieces fishing to keep a guy excited about whats at the end of the line.

    Thanks, Bill

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