MIssissippi River MN Walleye Fishing Report

This will be somewhat of a short report. I have only had the chance to be on the river twice since my last one and James did a great job on letting everyone in on what to look for and the current river conditions.

Last Sunday I spent a couple of hours fishing with my gal in the morning. I had a some nice fish in the 17” to 22” range before she jumped in the boat on purple/chartreuse tail ringworms. Since I had a heads up on the best bait I rigged her up with a purple/white tail ringie (this color must have been the better choice) it only took her about 30mins to get the 2 nice fish pictured here. These were the only 2 fish she brought to the boat in the couple hours spent on the water together but they were the right ones. Nice fish Jen! The rest of the morning was good to me with 18 nice walleye and 2 sauger coming to the boat just jumping around casting various areas of rock and sand until 11:00am then the bite slowed way down for me. With the cloudy conditions we had that day the fish stayed shallow for most of the morning hrs. I had all my fish in 12’ of water or less. The afternoon proved to be a bit tougher for me or maybe it was just my partner for the pm hours! I spent the afternoon Fishing with the owner of B-Fishn Tackle Mike Little with only 6 decent fish to show for our efforts. We never pulled out to the deeper stuff and do the yo-yo thing we just kept on looking of that one big bite that we never saw in the pm hours. You should have been there in the morning Mike…….LOL! I usually fish the lightest jig I can get away with when casting to the rocks or sand but on this day the fish wanted a heavier jig just slowly moved across the bottom, no fancy jigging motion to entice a strike. I was using 3/16oz and 1/4oz jigs concentrating on the rock/sand transition at the base of the rip rap. In these areas I normally would fish a 3/32 or 1/8ozjig keeping it up off the bottom drifting it with the current for a longer period of time, but those eye’s wanted that ringworm right on the bottom this day. The slower speed of the heavier jig seemed to be key for me.

On Wednesday I shared my boat with Laverne Reimers and Rick Brockney. We started the day pitching K-grubs to various rip rap areas with minimal success, only 3 walleye in the 17“ range to show. The wind made it tough to cast and once the sun got up high in the sky with no clouds it was pretty much a waste of time. The rest of the day proceeded to be like any other bright blue bird sunny day with heavy boat traffic this time of year. The bite was tough and stayed that way most of the day. We spent the rest of our morning hours doing the vertical thing in 17’ to 22’ of water with ring worms, superdoos and shad bodies. The little walleye and sauger were on a tear nabbing just about anything you could put down there. Some of the nicer fish we had early on where rolling on the bait and getting hooked in the lower jaw, in return we had a lot of missed fish. We did have some nice fish on the doos and a couple on the ring worms but the bigger fish just weren’t that aggressive so we switched it up a bit and went to lighter jigs tipped with a ringworm and got some of those 19”saugers to get themselves caught. The only color ring worm that we could get bit on by the better fish was the pro-blue color. I can honestly say I have never seen a day in which one color is so much more dominant over another. We tried other various colors and couldn’t even buy a bite on the better fish, Rick and Laverne can attest to that. We never did light um up but ended the day with 20 decent walleye and sauger in the 15” to 19” range. Buy late afternoon the superdoo bite picked up for a bit but the ringies got most of our nicer fish thru the day. Thanks for making the trip guys, see you on the river soon I’m sure.

This will be my last report for about 2 to 3 weeks with other commitments getting in the way of me being on the river. Once I get going again I’ll have the latest info from my boat.

I’ll see ya on the river!

Pictures can be clicked on for larger view.