Pool 4 Walleye/Sauger & Crappie Report

Over the past couple weeks we have been chasing walleyes and saugers on the river with a variety of presentations. Because fish are so active, Fall is a great time of year to bone up on a tactic that you don’t have a lot of confidence in or one that you just really like to fish.

Dubuque rigs, crank rigs, three ways/sticks and throwing jigs have been my go tos for catching walleyes and saugers while simply throwing bucktail jigs is usually all we need on the crappies

Last Friday Mike Petersen and Jeff Pleimling and I used dubuque rigs to catch a two man limit of fish in a short time before moveing on to other things. One key to this rig was using a heavy enough jig to allow us to move around on a deep swift break and not lose contact with the bottom.
One drawback to this can be a lot of short hits on the jig due to its size. We used stinger hooks on the back of the 1/2 and 5/8th oz jigs to combat this poblem. I know some folks think stingers are taboo but they sill have a time and place in my boat under certain circumstances.
We caught fish on both ends of this rig but many of our better fish were hooked right in the snout on the trailing stinger.

Three ways and sticks have also been a go to, as usual for my boat. Playing with the size of the bait is still as critical as color on certain days.
While slow fishing these rigs with rods in hand there are times that we feel fish bat at the baits or just swipe at them with nothing on the hookset. Downsizing from a nine to a seven or even a five can make them commit enough to get the hooks home. Still the most important detail in the set up is the side to side motion one needs to put in the boat rather than just a steady upstream troll.
I do believe the best stick bait bite will happen in the next two weeks as the water temp drops and stays in the low 40’s

And finally, the crappie bite that we are used to on the river/lake has made an appearance. Numbers and size have been fantastic as these critters have found their way to the rocky shoreling breaks in the lake.
We have been catching our fish from 6 – 16 fow. Throwing light bucktail jigs and crawling them back is about all we have been doing to catch our fish. Less is more with these cold water fish. Too much action in the bait leaves us with no bites on most days.

The last picture is just a sample of the size of shad that the walleyes in the system will eat. We had no fish in the livewell over 19″s on this day and that is my size 12 shoe beside the shad.