Its pretty common knowledge that walleyes like wood to hang out in. Wood provides fantastic structure for bait fish to hang around. It provides great current breaks for hungry walleyes to hide in waiting for there next meal to swim by. What it also provides is some very challenging structure for fishermen to work their lures through to get those hungry fish out of. Toss a standard gum ball jig into one of these spots and chances are its not coming back. But with the right location and lure you can find and target the hungry walleyes hiding in the wood.
The last few weeks I have been targeting walleyes in a couple of small rivers in MN. The Mississippi north of Aitkin and the St Croix north of Osceola. Both very shallow sections of river with plenty of trees fallen into them. Most likely a common trend to many smaller rivers in the upper mid west. This time of year many fishermen target the holes in these stretches of river with tradition jigs and minnows at times just anchoring up in one spot and jigging below the boat. My guess is to much moving around and they are soon to find a snag for there offering. Can not blame them as the trees in these rives eat jigs like crazy. With the right tackle our approach the last few weeks has been to find the right wood on these sections of river and through our jigs right into the thickest part of it. Why? Because walleyes love wood.
For areas we have been targeting its been a little different for each of these rivers. The Mississippi river last week the flow was up a little and those walleyes did not want to be in it even with plenty of wood for cover. Here we targeted inside bends of the river with steep banks or current seems created by bank slides and root balls of trees that had slid into the water. There is not much more of a snaggy mess on the river than a root ball of a tree. Not sure why these eyes where hiding from the current so much as it really wasn’t that bad.
On the croix we where targeting outside bends of the river that had increased flow and wood. Depth in these areas didnt seem to matter as mush. One of our best areas was 3′ of water or less and we found walleyes in there feeding mid day. These fish where not afraid to come up out of those logs and smack a jig swimming by. How shallow? Shallow enough that I could see the jig swimming and walleyes coming up to strike at it.
For what we are throwing in these snag infested areas to lure these fish out is plastics and BfishN Dragging Jigs . The more I use these jigs the more applications I find for them and appreciation of how they get through some very nasty stuff. No more being squeamish about tossing jigs into trees or other snag ridden areas. They just keep coming back to the boat. I dont even care to think of how many jigs of mine are hanging on the logs of the areas I described above from past fishing trips. It was to the point we wanted to avoid these spots and changed how we fished. The last few trips using Draggin jigs I’ve maybe donated one jig per day. It is very nice having the confidence that I can throw these jigs back into these areas over and over again, working them at times very slowly right up to, across, back down some of these logs and now they are coming back to the boat.
If you live near or are a fan of fishing small rivers I would recommend adding a few Dragging jigs to your box of offerings. Be it pitching them into the wood like I described above, dragging (slow trolling) them through some of these same snaggy areas or just tossing them out with some live bait to sit on the bottom in logs you to may just expand some of your presentation on these rivers to. They may just help you coax some of those hungry walleyes out of all the wood cover that these smaller river have to offer.
Good luck fishing.