Mississippi River Pool 4 Walleye Report 3-21-08

Happy Easter everyone! Decided to take the day off, been on the water 3 of the last five days and the weather has been a little frightful to say the least. The water and bite have been in good condition here on Pool 4. During the low light times the bite is very good, day time hours it slows but you can still work some fish up. We have been taking our fish on plastics and jig and minnows. Yesterday for my boat all our smaller fish came on bait. The ringworms took all of our big fish the last three outings for me.

Yesterday I had the chance to get out with a great friend and spend some time chasing the big girls and it just was not in our cards. We scored four walleyes over 20 inches but none over 23 inches. However Brad Laabs did score his personal best USA northern it went 18.11 pounds. He has taken a northern in Canada over 20 and many Muskie up in northern Minnesota over 50 inches. This fish came on a chartreuse head and a oyster shell ringworm in 15 feet of water. I have to say it did have us guessing what the heck was on the other end of his line cause I had to chase it with the boat.

We have been spending a lot of our time dragging worms in the 12 to 22 foot range. Pro blue, oyster shell, and firecracker have been our best colors with the clear water that we have right now. But expect things to start to change in a hurry with the flow and water rising. Jig colors have been plain lead head, chartreuse, sour apple, and orange. Pyro keet has been good deep when I go vertical. Here is a shot of a 22 incher we popped yesterday on a pro blue.

This last shot is of Brad with his take home fish. We stayed for the evening bite and it was fast and furious at times, we were boating four to six fish a pass for a while. Not all were keepers but they were string stretchers. It became quite pleasant as the sun was leaving us and we returned to the bait shop to spin tales and listen to all the days’ fish stories about 8:00 pm. Thanks Dean for all the info and huge thanks for you know what for Brad. You are the best buddy, I really appreciated that, you made our day very pleasant. Thank you!!

Friday I got to spend the day with John and Tom they were from the Packer state. And man they are a couple of tough outdoors man. We fished with a blizzard all day long had at least six inches if not more of snow in the boat. The conditions were less than ideal, my trolling motor crapped right away with a switch problem and by the end of the day the main motor got tired of starting but we did get through it. John had his personal best walleye come to the boat; she tipped the scale at 10 plus pounds. Congratulations she was a beauty. Tom scored one about four pounds. I think we ended the day with five fish to take home. We released all our fish 20 inches and over. Thanks a lot guys it was a blast.

John it was great having a chance to see you boat that 7 plus, Awesome job.

Take care hope to see you on the water.