Mississippi River Pool 2

With the Mississippi and the St. Croix river being so close, I normally spend the majority of my time trying to figure out pool 3 for the majority of the year, pool 4 during the late fall through early spring, and a little bit of time on the St. Croix, never really giving pool 2 much effort or thought. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve put anytime fishing pool 2, hanging out on an island enjoying the weekend sure, jumping from dam to dam looking for fish, not so much.
The crew from Hastings spent last weekend camping and enjoying the conversation last weekend on an island on pool 2, but I never broke out the fishing gear. With our Wednesday garage logic meetings put on hold while the “president” is working out of town, we’ve taken the show to the water, and the Miller boys were determined to get me interested into fishing pool 2 again.

Now my experiences on Pool 2 were quite a few years ago, pre me having gps, line counters, mapping chips, troll master and other goodies at hand. Put the boat in gear, grab your favorite rapala let a bunch of line out and go!! The Miller brothers have way more experience on this pool than I, so it was a learning trip for me, and learn I did!!
The night was mixed between trolling and pitching wing dams. We were trolling silted in wing dams, rock shoreline, and rock closing dams from 6-18 feet of water, 2.2 – 2.5 mph and had an assortment of baits out throughout the night, from #5 bright and shiny to #9 naturals and they all caught fish… Kind of hard to pattern, but there were rods being bent and smiles on our faces, so not to worry! I started the night off right, with a 25 ½ coming on a #8 Shad color rapala, from there Bob put on a short clinic running his favorite flicker shad. He popped a 26 ½ and a 25 ½ and lost one pretty much boat side (rod tip up Bob!!)

We set up on the wing dams like we normally would, find flow with a steep face and deep water adjacent and pitch the dam with cranks and break out the jig and cat rods. For me as of late on pool 3, the crank bite has been slow to nonexistent; the eyes are showing strong preference to crawler, leech and cat set ups, not true on pool 2 this night. We couldn’t buy a bite with live bait, so those rods went back into the locker and the crank pitching rods came back out. Dan feeling the pressure quickly boated a 26, I followed up with the only under 20 for the night, Bob countered that with another 25 1/2, and Dan cleaned up the order with a chunky 24 ¼.
To finish off an already great night, we hit another trolling run to score a few last light eyes before the run back to the trailer, and Bob again comes through, with the bonus flat head!!! Bob also scored bonus points on this night, for finding and retrieving a rapala dt6 that didn’t want to stay on my line any longer, I didn’t see it as the boat passed by the half submerged crank, and Bob swooped into action, snagging the lure with his trolling rod! Nice save Bobo!

All in all a guy can’t ask for much more, fish were caught, conversation was more than entertaining and there is now more water on my list to figure out and dial in….
See you on the water,

Jami