It feels really good to get back to pool 4 and chase some walleyes, between work and moving to a new home that included a pretty big honey do list, I haven’t been on Pool 4 for over a month. We started out the day pulling spinner rigs with leaches and crawlers upstream and dragging jigs downstream. 5 minutes into the first pass Joey got smoked by this nice pool 4 walleye.
I noticed that the fish were not schooled up, and if I was going to pool 4 in the future I would be consistently on the move. I wasn’t able to pull more than 2 or 3 fish out of an area but if you just kept hitting your favorite spots where the slack water met good flow in 12 foot of water or less you would find sucess. We also didn’t boat any saugers which tells me that they haven’t started making the big run yet so you would probably find good results in upper and lower pool 4 right now. We didn’t hit any hogs today but ended up with some nice eater fish and enjoyed a beautiful day.
The color of jigs we were using didn’t seem to matter, we all used different colors and weights from 1/16 to 1/4 oz jigs and we all caught fish. When we were pulling spinners gold was a better choice. On friday I stopped by my favorite bait shop Hooked On Fishing and picked up 2 dozen quality leaches and crawlers. I would suggest bringing plenty of bait because along with a decent walleye bite we also found channel cats, mud cats, sheepshead, and stripers willing to bite.
Since we were out of bait by 10:30 we started pulling cranks. We were able to find fish willing to bite pulling cranks. Nothing really seemed consistant as far as location, color, speed, and style of crank bait. If you are planning a trip to pool 4 my suggestion would be to use multiple presentations and stay on the move. I think you will be able to start intercepting walleyes and saugers making transitional fall runs very soon.
Tight lines,
Joey
Thanks for the report and pics bud. Great to see you are back on the water too. Nate and I caught our fish last weekend dragging light jigs downstream with leeches and crawlers. Went through 3 dozen leeches and 3 dozen crawlers from HOF too. Our fish were all walleyes [no sauger] and small catfish with a few sheephead too. Fall is a great time to be on the water as your report says.
Thanks, Bill
Sounds like a lot of fun! Thanks for the report!
Thanks for the up-date and report Joe! I managed to catch a couple of small saugers of the dock this weekend on bucktails,there are a few sneaking there way back upstream!