Miss. River pool 4

[Loren Waalkens]

With this recent cold snap open water fishing has been pretty much put on hold. If the weather report for this weekend is accurate we should be able to get the boats back on the water by then. I would think that with the much colder water temps that the dam area at Red Wing would be the best bet for putting some fish in the boat. The ice bite on Pepin for walleyes and saugers has been a early morning, late afternoon bite with flurries of activity at each end of the day. I did run into some really nice slab crappies suspended in 28 ft of water the other day and I think that they deserve some more attention in the near future. So many things to do and only one of me, I need a clone....

Loren Waalkens

[Spinach]

Thanks for the report Loren. The weather is supposed to change tomorrow, 25 on Friday and 30's this weekend. 

[Loren Waalkens]

I am pumped. Even in the winter it is rare that I don't get the boat on the water at least once in a two week period. It will be two weeks Sunday, withdrawals are setting in....

Loren Waalkens

[Mayfly]

Sounds cold!

So you know where to find those monster walleyes I see being caught every spring down there???

[Loren Waalkens]

Hi Tim,
When you talk spring I asume you are talking about the spawning run? That can be a great time to put some big fish in the boat and under the right conditions we do quite well. The thing about that bite is that there are so many variables(flooding, extreemely dirty water,rapidly fluctuating water temps, ect...) to deal with that it can be a real tough one to predict. My personal favorite is the late spring, early summer wingdam bite useing willow cats. There is nothing like a slob walleye hammering a willow cat. A close second would have to be the fall Lake Pepin shoreline bite. I love catching big eyes casting shad raps. It's also hard to ignore the summer suspended bite in the Lake. I guess what I am saying is that there are lots of opportunities to put some big fish in the boat on these waters and lots of different ways of doing it.

Loren Waalkens

[Mayfly]

I have only made it down to the Red Wing area of the river fishing once. I met a guy on another website who claimed that he knew the body of water very good. We launched near a marina by a park, forget the name. We then went down the river and back up to a sand flat area. I let him do it all since he claimed to be the expert. We anchored on this sand flat and put small jigs with a sinker about 8 inches above the hook. The jigs were floaters I believe. We tipped them with minnows. The we casted them out and let them sit. I was a bit uneasy about this so I let it go, he was the expert. After about 10 minutes of nothing I got a bit antsy. Not the case for him. He made me sit in that spot for an hour before he moved about 50 feet and then wanted to do the same thing. This is very similar to how I have fished the river from shore when I was a kid and we used to catch a ton of carp. I finally talked him into going to new spot. We went down the river and did the same thing but this time he anchored in the middle of the river and he wanted to use bigger jigs. So I went along with him. I brought no tackle. He said he was going to guide me We sat there for about a half hour until we almost got ran over by a barge. Thats it! I want to go home......

What a horrible day. I can't believe this guy can catch anything. So that was my experience on the Red Wing strecth. What a joke.


 

[Realtree]

I have a couple of coworkers out of the airport in Rochester that frequently fish the river between Pepin and Winona with great success. They have offered to take me out this spring and I plan to make the time to get out with them at least a couple of times.