My buddies Mike and Trevor and I decided to brave the heat yesterday and hit pool 11. Our plan was to cast cranks to as many wing dams as we could before we got cooked and see what was willing to bite.
We had pretty good success throughout the morning hitting the wing dams and a couple closing dams. The first picture is Trevor with really nice 19" smallie caught in heavy current above a closing dam in a side cut. Wing dams with more current on them produced the most fish. We caught several largemouth and smallmouth. Here’s a picture of Mike with a nice 17" LMB.
The best cranks throughout the morining and early afternoon were blue/silver #5 jointed shad raps. We tried a lot of different cranks and most produced a fish or two including red craw flicker shads, white JSR’s, bomber’s and original shad raps but we all caught the most on that blue JSR #5. Here’s a nother nice 16" smallie Mike caught.
Amongst the many smallmouth and largemouth, we did manage to catch 5 or 6 keeper eyes, some snot rockets, and a couple nice crappies. The walleyes seemed to be out in front of the dam just a little in about 8 ft of water. We caught most of the bass and northerns right on top of the dams and the crappies were hanging out between dams. Here’s a nice 11.5" crappie Trevor caught in b/w wing dams on a jig/twister.
It’s definitely hot out but the fish are biting! Targeting the sunrise or sunset periods will be the way I go next time if it’s this hot. The fishing slowed noticeably as the sun got hotter.
Nice hot weather report Andy
Well done Andy!
Great job Andy and company
You are braver than I in this weather 
I sat inside all day due to fear of melting 
Nice report Andy. I fished pool 12 with a couple of buddies both Saturday and Sunday mornings doing very well both mornings. I caught a couple nice smallies and a largemouth but we mostly caught walleyes. Casting #5 jointed shad raps took a few fish but we took more pulling the cranks along the face and top of the dams with the electric. We even had a couple doubles while pulling. A few fish we took on crawlers and jigs working DBQ 3-way rigs but the lion share of fish were caught on #5 Jointed Shad Raps in the blue top, white sides, orange belly color combination. Stayed out until noon on Saturday and until 11:30 yesterday and that was too-long considering how hot it was. We kept a dozen or so legal walleyes and a few nice saugers on both days with a few bullgills thrown in.
One tip for people intending on keeping fish in this hot weather would to put them directly on ice as sson as you catch them. On Saturday we put our fish in the livewell. We ran the livewell the entire time we were out and still most of the walleyes went belly up and lost color. Yesterday we put them right in a cooler full of ice. They kept their color and didn’t stiffen up nearly as much as the fish did the day before.
Eyehunter
Nice report Andy, gotta love wing dams this time of year
Nice report Andy! Multi species days are a lot of fun!!!
The Mrs.- little guy, and I have been doing real well
on the wing dams with red and white cranks.
Thanks for the report,
Brian
Hey Andy nice report I was just wondering what a closing dam was? Keep On Keepin On
A closing dam is a “line” of rocks set all the way across a channel. They are normally set by the corp of engineers on back channels where they want to direct the flow towards the main channels.
Thanks Farmboy guess I’ve been fishing one for years down on 12