The walleye bite on the upper end of pool 4 has been somewhat of a roller coaster ride with the bite being a bit different from day to day. The key ingredient for getting numbers of better fish has been the weather for my boat, if encountering blue bird sunny skies with little to no wind, the walleye fishing is going to be down right tough for most of the day when looking for that one big one. If you are fortunate enough to get clouds and a good breeze blowing out of any direction it will increase you hooking percentage for the better fish greatly. As I said in one of my other reports recently, the numbers of fish on the bright blue sky sunny days are still there, the size just seems to be a bit off with a catch ratio of 7 to 10 little fish to one legal. Make sure to take plenty of bait when fishing the river.
This last weekend, August 9th and 10th, was spent guiding for a wonderful non-profit organization named ARM (Anglers As Role Models). I spent most of my time in shallow water areas, 2’ to 4’, drifting with split shot rigs with no shortage of fish catching action. My boat saw Walleye, Catfish, Sheephead, Smallmouth, White Bass and Carp make it to the boat. It was a great time had by all who participated in this event and the smiles on those kids faces at days end made it well worth it. Thanks to all who made this event happen!
On Monday, I shared my boat with Robert, his wife Ann, and their two friends from out east Paul and Diane. We spent the day concentrating our efforts in 2’ to 4’ of water with light jigs and split shot rigs in areas that have more flow than the rest of the river. The started out really slow like most days have been in the last month with a lot of short fish. By about noon the clouds moved in and the wind picked up a bit giving us the weather I was hoping for. The rest of the day we saw some decent action in the areas I had confidence in to put a couple of good fish in the boat. Most of the number came on split shot rigs with leeches or crawlers but small jigs put the biggest fish of the day in the boat. Ann is pictured above with a 25” walleye we took on a chartreuse jig/leech combo, Diane is pictured here as well with her best fish of the day caught on a split shot rig. Thanks for making the trip guys and I hope to fish with you again in the future.
This Saturday I spent the day fishing with my good buddy from Iowa Keith Stough. Keith came up for the EFN get together, and to do a little fishing of course! The morning hrs were kind of a bust for us encountering boat problems. Once I started rigging the boat I noticed the main battery was deader than dead, couldn’t even get the graphs to turn on. The next hour we spent just waiting for the batteries to charge up so I could get the boat in the river and get it started, once doing so I ran around the river taking pictures of other EFN website members who fished the get together tournament. At about 9:00 I had done enough running around the river getting the main battery back up to full power so we started fishing. We started our fishing day trolling rip rap with #5 jointed shad raps, after fishing a couple areas with little success, except for those darn sheepies, we continued to troll various areas of rip rap until Keith hooked in to the fish pictured here that he caught on a perch colored #5 jointed shad rap. This fish weighed in at 6.88lb’s and was good enough to get Keith the winning prize for the walleye category in the EFN fishing tournament. Nice fish Keith! Our trolling bite was pretty much taken over with those pesky sheepheads about every 2 minutes so we just gave it up and went to casting jigs to the other rip area’s I had faith in. 1/8oz jigs gave us the best drift speed for the area we chose to concentrate on using leeches and crawlers, I struck first with a couple 17” fish, one on a crawler and another on a leech. After a little down time and some re-positioning of the boat, Keith hooked in to a really nice fish using a leech that can be seen on the Mississippi river Walleye forum. It wasn’t long after Keith caught that fish I hooked in to a nice 26” fish using a crawler that’s pictured here as well. We had a few more eaters casting crank baits to shallower portions of rip rap that are to shallow to troll on also. All in all we had a pretty darn good day! Thanks for coming up from the great state of Ioway and spending a day on the big river with me Keith, it was a blast!
The river is really low right now, lowest I can remember seeing it in years so be very careful out there if not running the main channel between the buoys. As you can see several presentations can and will put fish in the boat right now, hope for wind and patchy cloud cover, stay in high confidence areas waiting them out and you should get bit.
I’ll see you on the river!