a day to remember
It was early April and the Ice was beginning to melt on the river. The walleyes were bitting, so it was time to pull out the rode and reel for the first time of the season.
we awoke early to get a jump on the day and also to beat the mass amount of boat that load up at the lock and dams this time of year in Minnesota/Wisconsin. The wind was blowing and the rain was coming, but that didn't stop us from getting on some Mississippi River Walters.
we launched the boat and as my buddy goes to park the truck I witness a guy struggling to start his boat and was drifting away, thankfully he had a trolling motor, but it made me reflect the importance of having back up motor assistance on the river, if he didn’t have the trolling motor there is no doubt we would’ve been pulling them back to the launch dock.
Anyways we pick up my buddy from the launch dock and head toward the Red Wing lock and dam, and man I was sure glade we got there early, no later then 7 am and boats are stacking up. we set our line and begin to fish.
It was a cold windy morning, no warmer then 25 degrees, but it was suppose to warm up throughout the day, it was something to look forward too, because we didn’t catch a thing the first hour. Then as I began to learn braided line not properly secured to my reel spool on a cold wet mornings, my buddy hooks into a Mississippi River walleye using a hair jig. I was thinking who the hell uses a hair jig? I’ve been fishing my hole life and those are the jigs that have sitting in my box collecting dust, he proved me wrong, and once he broke the ice, it was game on.
Now that I got my line figured out and got set back up, I went with the classic jig and minnow. I didn’t catch anything for a bout 30 minutes. We had only had only caught 4 in the past 3 hours. It was time to move, and move we did. We dicided to move down river away from the damn, and that’s when it began. I decided to pitch into shallow and every cast either caught a small mouth or a strip bass. I literally couldn’t keep the fish off my line. I even caught my person best small mouth, it was 19 inches, I don’t fish small mouths much so for it was a Giant.
The only problem, those weren't fish we were out to get, I wanted a Walter. The day continued as so, find a spot catch a couple, find a spot catch a mass amount of strip bass, just seemed we weren’t gunned hit the big numbers of walleye and sauger that my buddy and many other were bragging about. Until we found the spot. It was literally 50 yard from were I was catching all the small mouth and stripe bass, mentioned earlier. It was insane we caught our limit in sauger in a matter of minutes, and I personally released 20 more. It was insane, it reminded me of opening day on Lake of the Woods. As our time was coming to end on the day I really got a deep appreciation on how good of a fishery the Mississippi River is. We are blessed to have it, but the moral of the story, even though I caught a ton of fish, I never caught an actual walleye. just give me another accuse to fish another day.
