Mississippi River St. Paul, Minnesota Pool 2 Fishing Report

This week has shown its ups and down as for the number of fish that has made it to the boat, but the quality continues to get better and better as of late. I was fortunate enough to make contact with several big fish on last nights outing to hopefully go out on a limb and say that the big fish bite has arrived and started to chew? The water levels have risen a bit from Sunday’s outing and in turn have noticed increased flow! Although the visibility has stained a bit from the warm weather and rain, it still remains pretty respectable with about 3 foot clarity in the upper portion of Pool 2.

Wingdams continue to be my best bite going for sheer average size of the fish. I gave the vertical jig bite a shot today for the first time in several outings only to be disappointed with the results. Quickly I returned to the wingdams with hopes of tackling some bigger fish. Because Pool 2 of the Mississippi river is all catch and release for walleye and saugers, I concentrate most of my time looking for that above average fish. I think most would agree that most of the time catching one bigger fish would quickly make up a day of catching sub-standard size fish! Sunday evening gave me the opportunity to explore some pieces of structure that I have not fished for awhile that should start to be productive this time of year. Sand and riprap shorelines gave way to producing several numbers of fish by pitching light 4” Yum ribworms to the shorelines with lighter than average sized jig weights. 1/32 and 1/16th oz seem to be the favored size as these fish were tight to the bank at sundown. This bite quickly fizzled out after about 7 fish to show for my efforts with the biggest around 22 inches. I switched locations and jumped around to a couple wing dams only to find one fish here and there. I decided to keep moving around the wingdam with hopes of finding these fish that I knew could not have been far! (kind of like playing hide and seek around the corners of their house) I went ultra tight to the bank where the wingdam meets the shore and scored big! Here again light jigs and plastics made the difference here. I ended the evening with about 22 fish with a pair of 25 inchers before I ended my 16 hour day on the water between Pool 4 and Pool 2.

Last night I was joined by John Nordenstrom from Blaine, Mn. We got on the water about 4:00pm and went wingdam hopping with hopes of making contact with some better sized fish!. By sundown, we had about 6 fish with not much on the overall size. I made a switch and took a boat ride up river a ways and found a subtle wingdam that been silted over for the past several years. This particular spot gave way to some very large walleyes back in January for me. Well, to my surprise these big fish were still there and ready to chew BIGTIME! 3 casts into this spot, John drew first blood and scored big with a big hefty female walleye that hit the tape at 28-1/2 inches! Nice fish John! As you can see this fish was eating well and had a big tummy to shoe for it. A couple casts later and I decided to join in the fun and scored with a nice 26” fish. This spot gave up a couple more fish of much smaller caliber, but had me intrigued to go and seek out some of my other silted in wingdams. After a little boat ride once again, I stopped at a couple wingies and finally found a spot that had another couple huge fish awaiting our arrival.

Third cast in and I got drilled hard with a big hit! After a good hook set and a viscous fight to the boat , I lifted this beautiful specimen up and was just in AAH of her size. She hit the tape just over the 30” mark and guessing she went a solid 10 pound with another massive girth on her. This spot produced one more 26”+ fish that fell victim to a 4” Yum ribworm in the Ozark smoke color.

John and I ended our evening with a little lower on the overall numbers of fish but the size made up for all that it was lacking! This week has shown its improvement on Pool 2 that will hopefully set the stage for a great pre-spawn movement to take place very soon here on the river. With water levels coming up a bit and flows starting to increase, we should quickly start to see a better vertical jig bite. The big fish that we landed last night came from within a mile from the confluence area, so these fish are in the area and should be on the chew in the days to come. With a full moon upon us, this is setting the stage for a fish of a lifetime to be caught, photo-ed, and released!

Good luck to all and I will see you on the river.