Metro Fishing Opener. Pool 2

What a fantastic Minnesota fishing opener weekend. Not sure if I can remember when the last opener was that it was warm, sunny and light winds for the entire weekend. It sounded like this was not only the conditions for us on pool 2 but the entire state. I hope the fishing was as well for everyone else to.

Saturday morning started out meeting Joel and Steve at Park Diner in St Paul Park about 6am. After a quick breakfast and a few fish stories it was off to Lions Levey to get the boat in the water.

1st spot to fish was a nice short wingdam that has been good to me the last few trips out. No fish on this spot but did notice the flow was up a bit. Started thinking rite there we needed to get out of that flow. Next spot was a little trolling run on the down river side of a island that produced a nice mid sized walleye for Joel. Next we ducked in behind some rocks to fish a nice current break. This spot held 3 nice walleyes that hit while casting cranks baits.

We continued on for most of the morning jumping spots like this finding a fish here and one there. Still not the bite I was looking for. We eventually made it into some backwaters and found active fish feeding on a current swept shoreline that had just the rite amount of rock and wood to provide cover for these hungry fish. The next 3 to 4 hours we spent there trolling and pitching to this area taking many nice walleyes, saugers and more smallmouth than I have ever seen on this stretch of the river.

After close to twelve hours on the water Saturday it was time to call it quits for the day. By this time we had easly lost count of the number of fish that had been caught. I would guess around 20 walleyes and the same for small mouth. There where even a few sheep head to be had and one nice sized pike for Joel. What a fantastic day on the water.

Sunday was going to be another great day on the river as my daughters Emily and Christina decided to jump in the boat with me. From deciding what are the rite snacks to bring with to who is going to use what color crank bait because its there favorite color, not because they think it will catch fish. This is always a adventure with my girls.

We started out where had left off Saturday. In the backwaters trolling up many walleyes and Small mouth bass. There where more small mouth this day than walleyes but the girls where happy with the scrappy fight and areal acrobatics of these fish. For the few hours we spent back in this area the action was pretty good. The girls got to reel in a lot of fish this morning. The also had fun counting the numbers of turtles sunning them selves on the timber and spent a fair amount of time collecting the numerous pieces of drift wood floating by. By mid afternoon my boat was slowly filling up with collected wood and it was time to go. On the way back to Lions Levey we stopped by one other quick trolling run and was able to boat our biggest fish of the day. A nice 25″ walleye that the girls where able to practice their netting skills on. A great way to end another great day of fishing.

Trolling crank baits in 5′ to 10′ depths took a lot of our fish over the weekend. We concentrated on areas with moderate flow where the fish had plenty of structure to hide behind. Blue was still a favorite to use but many other colors where getting hit to.

We also went back over some of these areas and focused pitching jigs and crank baits in shallower than where we could troll. This produced some pretty good results like the Nice walleye Steve is holding in the 1st photo. BfishN Tackle white paddle tails and 1/8 ounce H20 jigs worked well for this.

Once again it was a fantastic Minnesota fishing opener on Pool 2 as Im sure it was many places around the state. Even thou we are able to pursue these fish year round on Pool 2 there is still something special about opener. I hope the rest of you found good fishing this week to and where also able to make many great memories.

See you on the water.