Mississippi River Walleye & Sauger Report 4-09-09

I was able to spend April 1st thru the 8th on the mighty river. From Wednesday the 1st, thru Saturday the 4th the groups I fished with experienced a very sporadic walleye and sauger bite up until early this week . My efforts on these early trips were to try and focus on the bigger walleye. It didn’t take long and it was evident that with the higher cold water we were faced with, large majorities of the bigger fish were holding in the flooded timber. Locating them was not going to be easy. Most years we see the water warm, the walleyes move up and stage before the on-set of higher water. This first week in April saw water temps colder then what they were in January and February of this year. Since the might Miss has been flowing out of its banks, I believe that instead of staging, those bigger females went right in to the timber and sat on the spawning grounds. To make a long story short, bigger females were nonexistent for my boat and many others who tried to pursue them consistently.

Since I was unable to find the fish I was looking for, I turned my attention towards trying to figure out a pattern for numbers of fish. It took some grueling days of pitching jigs before I finally decided these fish were not going to cooperate as nicely as I would like. The walleye and sauger that we did put in the boat while casting jigs/plastics always bit once the jig washed to the backside of the boat and just hovered in the current practically motionless. Once that piece of the puzzle was solved, we would anchor high above the area we were targeting and just hold the jigs in the current while slowly working them back to the boat. This proved to be a good presentation to boat some good catches of fish for a day then the water levels started to recede. Once the water levels were on the decline, I found it harder to get numbers of fish in one single area. I figured the fish were on the move so opted to slowly drag jigs/plastics slowly up river at a snails pace to cover more water than I could from an anchored boat. This proved to be very effective since the fish didn’t want a fast moving bait. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday saw 35 to 50 legal fish days with a good mixture of Sauger and Walleye.

Best water depths for my boat have been in the 5’ to 14’ of water. Adjusting your jig size depending on the depth you are targeting is crucial to getting bit. You want just enough weight to get you down to the strike zone. Precision heads in the 1/8oz to 3/8oz were utilized. The new Draggin jig from B-fish worked it’s magic while dragging jigs over flooded riprap and timber. Some of the areas I was targeting would have been un-fishable with out this jig.

The only other pattern for me that was consistent this week, other than the slowly dragging baits up river was my plastics colors. Firecracker/chartreuse tail, oyster shell and chartreuse pepper proved to be my best producers in every area I targeted. Bright colored jig heads like sour apple and chartreuse/orange took top honors.

The warmer weather is finally here. The water levels have been slowly receding, water temps have been steadily rising. Should see some bigger walleyes being boated more consistently in the up coming week.

It was a long and cold winter! Being back in a boat and spending time down at Everts Resort over the past week was great. I got the chance to know Ben Garver and Wade Kuehl a bit better. Ben, thanks for inviting me to jump in your boat for a couple of hours it was nice not having to be in the captains chair, the only negative side was having to share the back of the boat with Wade (vacuum cleaner) Kuehl! Oh Wade, by the way, nice 10lber It was good seeing you guys again!

I would also like to thank all the groups that I shared my boat with over the past week. Even though some days the fish won, I still hope you were able to take something away from our time together and put it to use in your own arsenal.

I’ll see you on the river!