Franconia Question

[Ebiz]

My wife wants me to take her fishing on Saturday. ( I know, I know, when will they quit nagging ) I'm thinking about heading up to Franconia since she & I always like the area up there - especially now that the aluminum hatch is mostly over for the year. Problem is I haven't been able find any type of walleye bite up there in the past month or so. Tried 3 or 4 times in the past few weeks and have been getting blanked.

Plan on bringing a couple scoops of fatheads, what kinds of depths, presentations, structures should I be targeting.

Not asking for anyone to post specific spots, I pretty much have a few that I usually go to but if anyone wants to communicate via e-mail I'm up in that area quite a bit, maybe we can trade honeyholes? [email protected]

Any help would be appreciated since this trip will probably be limited to a few hours I'm trying to speed up the fish finding process. It's funny, I can take her out in the spring and put us on the walleyes but she doesn't understand how "I loose my ability" to fish once late summer comes around!

[b1gf1sh1]

look for emerald shiners later in the day in shallow water near sand flats or,preferably, humps, or find current durring the day and fish the eddies completely with the electric. the emeralds are the key in any situation because you can find them anytime as they are always at the surface down to mabe two feet. good luck.

[krinkle]

Did you find any walleyes. They where going pretty good a few weeks back and usually keep going right up to freeze up. Not much for size but good numbers. Deep water and current breaks is a good place to start looking. Other than that corners of the channel with fast water and wood can hold them also. Water doesnt need to be very deep in these areas.

[Ebiz]

Did find the walleyes, did not find any size to them however. Had a couple 14 3/4 inchers but the rest were all in the 12" range. Wound up catching around 20 or so - it's fun but would really like to figure out the bigger ones. Also managed a dozen crappies. All came on fatheads.

[tunrevir]

As the temps drop and the water temps go down you can get into some of the nicer eyes up that way as well as a few cats and smallies in the deeper water. The sauger will get more and more active as we get closer to freeze up as well as the eyes but in slightly different depths. Pike also will be active for the next month with some bigger fish becoming available through the fall. The panfish bite will decrease as the temps get colder but usually due to a decrease in activity and shorter feeding periods not because they aren't there. Slow presentations with live bait and a wider wobbling stick on a 3-way rig will take fish from the deeper areas well into the winter.

Tunrevir~

[Turk]

Tunrevir,

Nice little summary. Thanks!

Turk

[croixeyes]

One thing ive noticed when fishing the in the deeper holes upriver is that the bigger fish were, most times shallower than the smaller fish.If I was fishing in a trough of sorts that was 14 to 16 ft deep,and catching nails in that depth I would start casting into 1 to 3ft on the upstream side of the hole,most times that is where the bigger fish would be hanging.Daylight doesnt seem to bother these fish,Im sure they are up there chasing bait....2cents

[slipperybob]

I've also tried all around the hole too, as sometimes the bigger fish is on the side bank and some rare occassion on the flat at the downstream end. It's usually just a little pocket there on the downstream end, sometimes just a little boil or the current eddy.