Wapsipinicon River Fishing Report 11.17.07

Today, I was joined by my good friend Tony Pagliai in search of walleye’s on the Wapsipinicon River, in Eastern Iowa. We didn’t even catch one walleye today, but we caught quite a few other fish to make up for it…

The fishing trip was supposed to start at 8:00 am sharp, at least that is how we left it the night before. Tony sends me a text message at 6:15 am, stating "can we make it nine o’clock?". I am thinking, great, he’s backing out because he is duck hunting. Well, it turns out, I slept past my alarm anyways, and we didn’t get to meet up until 10:00 am. Even with a late start the trip was very enjoyable. And yes Tony saw many ducks today, but his aim was less than perfect..

On to the fishing- We loaded up the John boat, and electric trolling motor and headed to the river. We took our spinning combos, and the bft ringworms. I never leave the house without them. We concentrated our efforts, in 8-18 fow, with the majority of the bites coming in 8-12 fow. We found that areas with less current held more fish than areas with current. The fish were also strongly relating to rock, as opposed to sand or wood. The key bait for the trip was a purple with chartreuse tail ringworm, paired up with an 1/8th ounce precision head. All of the smallmouth that we caught, were caught on a pause. We would cast out, let the jig sink, and slowly begin retrieving it back, slowly jigging it off the bottom. When the line would go slack, it would either stay slack, or take off. I don’t think we had one fish hit in mid retrieve. You could say that we came upon what type of presentation they wanted by mistake. I caught a nice smallmouth on the first cast, and while Tony snapped a few pictures, and handed me back my camera he began to real his jig in, and realized that a smallmouth had picked his bait up as it was motionless on the bottom. With that it mind we began slowing our presentations way down. It almost seemed, the longer the bait sat in one place, the better chance we had at sticking a fish. This held true all day with the small mouth, as well as the crappies.

Two interesting things that happened today. I am a big fan of "downsizing" when the bite is slow to non-existent. However, after failing horribly at one of my best crappie spots, with smaller jigs/twisters, we ended up catching a ton of nice crappies on 4" ring-worms. Let’s just say, I am going to think twice about down-sizing next time the bite is tough. I am also a fan of using bright colors when the water is dirty. Purple would not be my first choice in dirty water, however it proved to be the only bait that would work today.

We probably caught around 35-40 crappies in the 10-14" range with a few smaller ones as well. We caught around 25 small mouth in the 14-17" range. Not great size, but for small mouth fishing in eastern Iowa, in November, that is a great day in my books. I guess the walleye Gods, weren’t in our favor today, and we had to just be bass guys today!! Thats fine with me!!

Tony is was great fishing with you- even though your aim is horrible on the ducks, I am glad you out-fished me on the river. Just don’t get used to it..

Have a great Holiday, and hopefully we’ll see you on the water! Tony and I are off to get some PAGLIAI’S PIZZA!!

All fish were released!