Mississippi River Pool 3 Report

With all the reports and PB’s that come from pool 4 this time of year I’m always hard pressed to not fish down there every chance I get.

It’s a spring ritual to see faces I haven’t seen in a long time, hanging out in the bait shop shooting the breeze and fishing with buddies eager to catch that one that everyone is looking for. Waiting, sometimes not so patiently for that one bite, the big mamma jamma to crush the offering I’m throwing. She has eluded me on pool 4 for now but I will return!

With the MTT tournament being held on pool 4 last weekend, and a nice bite shaping up on pool 3, it was an easy decision to spend some time on the home water and see what we could find. The plan was to run and gun current seams to see if we could find some fish. Techniques used were the same as on pool 4, pitching blades, plastics, hair and jig/minnow. So Friday afternoon we had 2 boats and 4 guys ready to go.

The weather was beautiful, little to no breeze and the water temps were coming up. Temps ranged from 48 – 52 degrees, depending on where you were. The first seem we worked had held real nice fish last year, but after working that spot for about 45 minutes with no fish to show, off we went to spot #2.

Sauger (Dan Miller) was first on the board with this dandy that took a purple chartreuse tail Everts ringer, next up was Burbob (Bob Miller) and this horse of eye that wanted his gold cracker chartreuse tail ring worm… Frustration was starting to build in my boat, but the evening was still early.

My boat ran to spot # 3, but as so often happens there was someone sitting right where I wanted to be, oh well, that’s the way it goes, so we anchored further up the seam and brought out the blades.

First fish for me just inhaled the blade; the orange Everts blade was buried. Not a huge fish, but the monkey was off my back. Next fish on was a doozie, nice big head shakes, ran right into the current. This could be the one, then what the heck, no more head shakes, just dead weight… Did the blade pop out and jam into a log???

Frustration and boiling point was met, from the high of it could be the big one, to lord only knows what the !##@!! is on the end of the line now…. I started horsing whatever was stuck on the blade to the boat, until the high came back… A very nice prespawn walleye! Once we got her slid into the net and took a look, she hit the blade, but somehow got the line wrapped around her tail! A quick measurement (28.5) and 2 pictures back in the water she went to finish the business she was there for. Minus a few eggs that found their way onto everything in the boat.

Dan and Bobo came up shortly after and anchored up above us. Bob quickly put on a clinic with his St. Croix mojo bass rod and Everts chartreuse blade. In no time he had a number of nice fish in the boat; Sauger was the extreme net man for once.

Fish were being caught on blades and I switched over to jig and minnow to try and coax a few more lethargic fish to bite, which they obliged.

Overall what a fabulous night on the water. Good fishing, good friends and the biggest prespawn walleye for me this year.

Next adventure is up to LOW for the Sturgeon Excursion, time to wrestle with some big old critters namely BK and hopefully also some nice sturgeon as well!

Then its back on the river to prefish for the upcoming tournaments.

See you on the water

Jami