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St. Croix River Fishing Reports


Joe

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Is the Ice still hanging in there in the center of the river???

Around Bayport it is fine, no change.

I went out Saturday afternoon from 1pm to 6pm. Slow bite, lots of lookers no matter what I threw at them. Managed to take home four fish.

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Sounds like mixed results this weekend. Honda found some in the middle of the day (just as I left frown )

Luck, you did nothing wrong. That's the way it's been. Lot's of lookers, few takers. For what it's worth, I've had my best luck with a red hook and smaller minnow about 3' off the bottom, or a red Diamond Jig and small minnow. Seems they want it held still, jig it and they're gone.

Good luck everyone, keep 'em coming.

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Does anyone know what the big shindig is this Sat.? Yeah, I'm a fishingmn.com noob...lol! Sounds like a great time. Any info is appreciated....

iiccee63

How does one get a photo to be the avatar?

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My best luck for crappie the last two weeks has been using my St Croix Legend UL rod(with a medium spring bobber) and a 5mm Tungsten Fiska jig tipped with two red maggots. Swim up and down about a 1/4" and pause...look for some type of disruption while swimming the spring bobber. Sometimes a still presentation works well too. They are biting very light, if the spring bobber moves up or down 1/8"...set the hook.

For my set line I'm using a small green-glow Genz bug tipped with a very small minnow, set below the smallest Ice Buster slip bobber. The bobber is weighed or cut so there is just a pimple of the bobber showing. Many times in the morning and evening the set line catches more, but when they shut off minnows the Fiska /Maggot combo continues to catch fish. I'm going to try the plain hook and a minnow technque and see how that works.

Last year you could tied on a #3 jigging rap in December and take it off in March and catch all the walleyes and crappies you wanted. Not this year.

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iiccee I see you got a picture posted. Nice.

Still having questions about the avatar?

Do the same thing as your photo but instead of clicking

"img code" click "direct link" then right click copy then paste when you are on the profile page.

Hope this helps

You can also can resize the photo's for posting up to, I beleive, 600x800 at your photo hosting site.

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DonBo

I'm using gold with a yellow bead (5mm). Found them at Gander Mountain in Lakeville, they have about 5 left. I ordered almost $30 worth on the bobber down site. Just do a search on Fiskas. My buddy used perch colored Fiskas at 4mm tonight and did well also. Sausage

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Was out this morning...found more of the active fish about 6 feet off the bottom. Was using bobber and minnow with a demon jig, and a plain hook. Most came on the demon. One fish was about 15 feet off the bottom so I just reeled up really quick and he hit it...to my surprise.

The action was definitely NOT fast and furious, but I was able to keep four. Nothing really big but decent eaters.

They are still hitting very lightly for the most part. (except the white bass!).

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I'm going out all day Wed., Feb. 25 6am-6pm. We'll see what happens and will give a good report (hopefully) on Thursday. Going to high line area once again...

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Was out yesterday from about 6am-4pm and ended up with 6 in the bucket. The biggest one was 13" (in the pic below) and the rest were between 9-10. Like said before, not fast and furiopus by any means. Most of them that I caught were about 10 ft up from the bottom and would be swimming solo. A big red line would show up on the flasher and I was moving my bait up to it and they'd usually smack it as soon as they saw it. Great weather to be out though.

0224091331.jpg

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Feb. 21st...

Returned to last weekends stomping grounds to focus on the shallower areas that produced, well this is the St.Croix so shallow for winter crappies to me is 20' to 24' grin I was on the ice for roughly the same time of day as last time, but maybe an hour or so less. Despite the temptation to punch some holes deep, I managed to stick to my game plan and stay shallower than 26', and it paid off! The crappies , as I anticipated ran larger and I actually ended up icing more by focusing all my time on a few holes between 22' and 26' rather than making the rounds on dozens of holes between 20' and 40'. Didn't catch anything under 10" and had two big ones at 12" & 12.5" plus a bonus 16" smallie and two walleyes. I narrowed down my selection of holes by which ones consistantly had baitfish moving through. For whatever reason they weren't always holes that were next to each other, but they were all similar depth and from my open water fishing of that area I knew that they all were over the same sand bottom. Technique was the same, small Custom Jigs&Spins Demon Jigging spoons in gold or silver with either a Gulp! waxie or this time even tried a Lindy micro tail in the clearish glow color. The spoon paired with the plastic tail bairly hooked on one hook of the trebble got a much more aggressive strike than the waxies. But important like last outing was the lack of lure motion when they were coming in for the bite. I kept the tail moving ever so slightly, but with the waxies I basically would dead stick it once I saw a fish rising towards it.

Just packed up and was heading back to the truck. With one hole between me and the vehicle I stopped and marked bait so I figured ahhh how bout "one last cast". Dropped down to just above the baitfish and a red line comes in...whack 18" eye to end the day!

DSC02350.jpg

Feb. 25th...

This week has been slow at work and even though I would like the hours, I can't complain about leaving early on a day like today. My wife had the day off so I mentioned maybe heading down to the river with the puppy for a couple hours. I narrowed down the area from Saturday even more and modified my techniques to me jigging a spoon with a couple rods with bobber and minnow. Didn't think the artificial was the way to go with her considering it takes everything I have just to get half of the lookers to bite right now. We had decent action with a flury of bites right away around 2:30. Wife hadn't been out fishing for a long long time and was rusty on the hook sets and I missed my share too, but we did get 3 quality crappies, two 11"s and my biggest this ice season at 13.5"s. I had fun as usual on the river, the puppy had fun running in circles around the fish trap and eating slush from the holes, and my wife was only slightly bored grin Another good day!

Personal best for '09 ice ( maybe the big ones were waiting for me to shave wink )...

DSC02356.jpg

Hope some of this info can be useful to others when venturing from the crappie holes.

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Hey TommyK.... nice fish there. I have no idea where all the walleyes have been this winter. Only got 1 17" sauger this winter! Looks like you are fishing down river north of Presott judging by the backround. I've wanted to get down that way but, never have. There is some nice structure that way compared to the Bayport area where I fish. Wed. the 25th was a joke. Was going to fish all day but, didn't get out til' 1:30pm. Fished to 6:20....one dam crappie, and lost a nice one. A 10.5" all the same but, pretty bad. Fished the high line area. Where are all the crapps?? Going out Friday @ 1 again. eek

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I went out and ice fished the river for the first time yesterday and had one of the best days fishing through the ice I have had in awhile! Just pounded the fish.I ended up limiting out on crappies on managed to get 4 nice eyes.I found a little underwater point on my H20 in about 27 ft. of water and fished by NOBODY that made it even better!I never knew that the river had nice crappies like it does.I was really suprised and am hooked!

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iiccee,

I have been north of Prescott, but I bet you could find dozen spots out of Bayport away from the crowds that are similar to were i have had success. Look for any size point or shelf with a fast breaking shoreline upriver leading into the turn out. Usually the drop is a little more gradual on that inside corner. I have always had better success fishing the upstream turn rather than the backside of the structure. As for the walleyes & saugers, I havn't been targeting them on the Croix this winter at all (I save that for pool 4) so the ones I do catch come through with the crappies.

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Nice fish tommy. I was targeting eyes earlier this year with little luck and then my little guy was born so haven't made it out fishin in about a month. I will have to give your tips a shot this weekend to hopefully ice a few more before season closes.

Openwater were you in the Bayport area or down by prescott? Without giving out to much info of course. I'm headed to bayport this weekend.

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5 crappies the hole day got out there 8:30 left 7:00. 2 13 inch and 3 10 inch. Bite was at 2:30 and 5 threw everything at them. Glo red ended up being the color. Also 2 small sauger I forgot to mention.

12:oo came around said to my buddy looks like the snows gonna miss us. Went to pack up at 7:oo had to dig out the Northlander.

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Newbie I was kind of by bayport.Went out and tried it tonight but they were not biting that good {thought it wouldn't be that great because of the great weather we had today}only ended up with 4.It's nice just getting out!

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I had my best day this winter on the river today. (2/26) (which may not be too impressive compared to many of you)Fished from about 2:30 til 5:30pm. Iced 5 keepers including a 12.5" and 14" crappie.

What was great about today was the serenity of the snowstorm and the lack fishing pressure. Shanty town is all but gone. (not to mention the kids spinning donuts non-stop on the 4-wheelers)

For me the success came in pink. Pink jig with minnow and a pink glow Ratso with no bait. (1st time I've ever fished it).

Ice conditions still strong. Looking forward to a few more outings.

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StCroixBanks: Nice catch! a 14" is a beauty! I'm wondering if yuo could tell me what the road condiotions are like? I'm in a car and wondering if I cuold get through with all the snow? Thanks!

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I was in a 2 wheel drive truck last night at 7pm when I came off and it was a litle tough going but ounce you get your momentum going you should fine.

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I'd like to get out this week and would be fishing across from Bayport. Can I acess the river from the park in Hudson or do I need to drive across from Bayport?

Thanks

HTB

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