St. Croix River Fishing Report

The mid walleye August bite calls for a game plan that involves working lots of spots to find your fish. Milk runs where fish have been holding are starting to produce less fish and so spot jumping is in order. I have been opting for a combination of cranks and spinners (with a little spilt shoting w/bait on small spots) and am still fishing in 20 to 24 feet of water. For the spinners my best blades have been firetiger and silver, I can’t honestly say the bead color matters but I like transparent yellow and red for colors, for bait I have been using crawlers. On a recent trip with Dennis Hahn we did just that, covered ground and caught this 30” walleye.

The eaters are still coming but again, you need to work for them much more than recent weeks.

Of all the months of the year I think August is best for mixed bag fishing with cats, bass, saugers, and muskie as targets, on any given day they can be prime to catch, and if one of these doesn’t want to go, go with the flow and fish for something else. So the next two pics are from a muskie guide trip. Pictured holding the fish is John Murphy with his first muskie of the day, this one went 44”, and we got this fish trolling on a gold colored muskie crank.

Here John is holding his second muskie, this one went 45” and was thicker. This nice one hit the same lure and put up an even better fight. I was targeting areas that are really classic current breaks, imagining these fish holding on ambush spots. Muskies aren’t just weed/vegetation relating fish, especially in a river.

To stay on the mixed bag theme of August, here is J.P.Goetstouwers with a nice 19” smallmouth. Bass have been holding in deeper water in the day and smacking shad, just like the eyes. We caught this one from 19 fow. I target bass with tubes on the drop shot rigs and also drag plastics. On a side note about bass you can still get them on top water but it’s a narrow window in the morning. Speaking of windows of fishing opportunity walleyes and saugers have been all over the board with a morning bite one day and the classic, it’s 9:00 am so lets go on the chew, St. Croix bite, plus one at about 3:00pm. Keep catchin’