Multi specie St. Croix River report

July 30, 2010 despite the heat and humidity the walleye and sauger bite is pretty good. The fish are always cool and swimming in their pool so what do they care? It is us anglers above the surface sweating our shirts off! When I mentioned the fish are biting, I refer to an anglers bait or lure, because fish always feed in the summer and feed heavy they do. In the river their main forage base is shad. Finding the shad bait balls on the graph is paramount to catching eyes and saugs.

Top fishing presentation/technique summary: Troll well tuned cranks in 18 to 29 feet of water. Rapala tail dancers, shad raps and RS, Storm Thundersticks – colors to use: , flash perch, crawfish, bleeding olive, chartreuse, and blue combinations. Rigging crawlers in the same depth with ½ to 1 ounce weights at .5 to .7mph. Key is finding bait balls on graph.

Trip story: Yesterday I guided Cay Hellervik and her grandson Malcolm Martin, he was in town from California. My plan was to troll Rapalas until we found fish and then rig them up. The trip started out well with Malcolm hooking nice fish on the second pass in a warm up spot I like to fish to get guests used to trolling, it is an area with nice clean sand bottom and no weeds. This fishing rod pumped like a sheepshead but dug down like a cat, he had a tough time reeling it in. We were all pleased to see a 19” walleye come to the net. We went through the warm up spot two more times with nothing tugging and then moved.

This trip started after lunch and these two fishing buddies did not have lunch yet, so we cruised at idle speed to the next spot. Out from their cooler came some Trader Joe’s cold salads, and Cay was kind enough to think of the guide and brought me one. I have had customers feed me many times and well too, but I will say a cold salad hits the spot in July on the Croix better than any chow on the boat I can remember. Topped the greens off with some cookies, cleaned up, and speed off full throttle.

It must have been the salads or the fact that this group was the first to wear my lucky type I lifejackets blaze orange and all, but either way the fish were snapping. First trolling pass through the next spot, Malcolm hooked a sauger just too short to keep. The States of MN and WI give the saugers no rights, but I make them be 14 inches to keep (fyi- eyes must be 15inches minimum and I do a voluntary release over 20 inches). Then we doubled up on keeper walleye and saugers or combinations of saugers and walleye too short to keep for an hour straight. Really fun stuff with synchronized hooksets as Malcolm would say -got one!- and then so would Cay. Cay would later put the rod down, and just shoot pics of him enjoying catching fish.

The trolling died down as the baitfish left the spot, and I wanted to switch gears and crawler fish with heavy split shots. We did this for the last part of the trip and caught sheeps and saugers. It was a great trip in the middle of the afternoon in hot July. Thank-you.

More trips in the heat went well this week, even on Tuesday when it was equatorial Africa hot and humid, Nick and Jeff Milleson hooked sauger and walleye, plus cats. That day they brought in 2 walleye, 6 saugers, 4 large crappies, and 6 good sunfish. Jeff had on another big cat from the same spot Tim Carter had caught his 35 inch channel cat.

There is a lot going on the St. Croix River from saugers to catfish to muskie (even though I have not been able to fish them much with booked walleye trips, I know were those big toothy suckers are! ha.) Have fun enjoy the summer because in a blink its going to be September. Keep Catchin’
Turk