Red Wing, MN Walleye Report – April 14, 2007

Temperatures have finally returned to a more seasonal pattern and water temps have again started their climb back into the mid to upper 40’s, right where they were 2 weeks ago. The severe cold snap, coupled with high winds for the better part of a full week, dropped water temperatures rapidly to a low of 35 degrees, taken as I launched my boat this past wednesday.

The chatter in the bait shop at Everst Resort and on the docks at the river’s edge was all about how the temps would impact the spawn. Many of us have heard that there’s few environmental factors more damaging to the walleye spawn than a significant decrease in temps after the fish have dropped eggs.

We were seeing the decreasing temperatures. And the majority of the fish that many of us were catching middle of last week were in fact post-spawn females. All the indications were there pointing to the potential for a "lost" spawn.

Thankfully as the water temps began their rebound the number of pre-spawn fish showing up in the net began to increase as well which has helped to aleviate fears that a large percentage of the walleyes spawned out before the major drop in water temps. What appears to have happened is a percentage did spawn before the cold snap but what seems to be a large percentage of the walleyes held off and should be going through the motions this week.

And a GREAT week of fishing it will be!

Anglers are reporting excellent catches of male walleyes and saugers in the deeper water up near the lock and dam. These anglers are targeting depths of 15′ – 24′ and doing very well fishing hair jigs and meat with some impressive catches coming on plastics. The most dominant method being employed seems to be "dragging" a heavier head up and downstream just above bottom versus the standard up / down yo-yo jigging method. Super Doos and Paddletails have been working exceptional well in this application.

My attentions have been focused on size versus numbers on my guide trips so I’ve been fishing different locations. I’ve got two types of structure that I’ve been targeting; deep current breaks at the base of riprap and shallow sandflats near access points into the backwaters.

Shallow sand has produced best early or late in the day while the deeper eddies at the base of riprap have produced for me 10 AM – 4 PM…. bankers hours!

Two basic presentations have taken all of my fish over the past week; sour apple precision heads on a firecracker chartreuse tail ringie OR an orange chartreuse head on "anything bright green" like chartreuse pepper, green core or orange core. Obviously the fish are still susceptible to the brighter colors even though water clarity is actually quite good for this time of year.

The other presentation that has been producing well for me has been 1/4 ounce blade baits in orange or green tiger when the sun has been out. Gold or black when the clouds roll in or the sun gets low on the horizon.

The plastics has produced all day long while the blades have put fish in the boat early and late in the day. Both presentations have been fished slowly and with a minimum of action imparted at the rod tip. Blade baits should be allow to sink to the bottom, come tight on the line, and then lift them up off the bottom with a short and moderately paced twitch of the rod tip. You don’t want to move the bait very far or very fast. Allow the bait to fall on a slack line…. most strikes come as the bait is falling back to the bottom.

The plastics have produced best when allowed to drift naturally with the current with most strikes coming as the bait is being hovered just above bottom for an extended period of time…. strikes are aggressive once the fish commit but with the water temps still hovering in the 39 – 41 degree range (as of this past saturday) these larger walleyes aren’t willing to chase a bait that is moving quickly.

All the photos in this report are from this past saturday when I had the chance to spend the day fishing with Steve Dezurik. We had the film crew along and our goal was to get a quality river walleye show filmed for release early in 2008. We had a fantastic day although the boat traffic made getting to some spots a "hurry up and wait" game.

The last couple photos are images taken from the video camera as we stopped taking the time to shoot stills with my digital camera once the crowds started to show up…. the only thing that attracts more attention on pool 4 than a net is a camera. Make that a professional video camera and you can imagine how many people we had hovering.

For the day Steve and I were able to boat nearly a dozen walleye over 24" with a couple real dandies that should make for a great show that we will be sharing here as a web video as well as on TV.

I’ll be looking to get back out and back at guiding towards the end of the week. Fishing should be excellent with the rising water temps and fairly stable weather. If anyone has an itch to scratch and needs an early season trip with a crack at a fish of a lifetime… give me a shout.