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St. Croix River Fishing Reports


Joe

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I'm thinking of heading out tomorrow around taylors falls with the ball and chain lookin for some channels. I haven't fished the croix that far north before. Am I better off heading a little south and fishing between osceola and marine or is there decent water around interstate park? Looking forward to getting out and learning another section of the river I am starting to appreciate more and more! thanks for any tips guys

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Hit the river solo yesterday and fished North of Hastings from 6:30 to 12:00. Things were fairly slow for me. Started off trolling crank baits in 15-22 ft and picked-up a couple of eyes right away then nothing for a long time. The bite totally died. Went and tried a new spot for a while and didn’t catch anything. Moved again to another spot and switched over to lindy rigging with a leach and picked up 2 suagers and missed a few other bites. Probably should have switched earlier, but oh well......

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Fished the croix saturday morning. Started pulling spinners with crawlers in 3 different areas which yeilded close to 20 short fish saugers/walleyes both. Ended pulling some smaller cranks on lead which yeilded 5 short fish as well. Slower day on the croix but was better than working.

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Fished the croix saturday morning. Started pulling spinners with crawlers in 3 different areas which yeilded close to 20 short fish saugers/walleyes both. Ended pulling some smaller cranks on lead which yeilded 5 short fish as well. Slower day on the croix but was better than working.

Your not alone. Seems like shorties has been all that I can pull in the last couple weeks. Not a single legal...

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Report from last Thursday, started lindy riggin leeches and picked up 3 nice ones right away, all about 16" along with a bunch of shorts, trolled some lead for a bit and got one more box fish. Picked up a buddy at the launch and we trolled lead and picked up two more keepers and a bunch more shorts. Finished the evening with leeches and picked up another two box fish...all in all a very good eve on the river once again!

Depths were from 15-25 on sand breaks. Glass shad raps in perch and shad colors.

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Walleyes are biting pretty good if you find the right area, crawlers have been working great just rigging, pulled this one out yesterday morning IMAG0482-1.jpg

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How has the bite been on the river lately? What's been biting?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Very nice dan!

I've never fished the croix before and have always wanted to and thinking about going this weekend. Im not sure what i want to try to target for but just wanna get the old man out for some safe fun fishing action but im willing to try to see if i can pull the drag on smallies or eyes or whities if lucky. Any tips where i can get decent boat launch access?? Also any tips of where is best to start would be much appreciated? thanks fellow fisher addicts!

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I'm not River Dan by any means, but I started fishing the Croix last season. I would launch at St. Croix Bluffs Regional Park and run up to the spot where the Kinni dumps into the St. Croix. It's usually busy, but a fun spot to fish!

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Shiltsy,

Thanks! Checked that on the map and its in Hastings area. What is typically caught around that area? & do you fish around the area or at the mouth of the kinni?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I went out on the St. Croix this last Saturday. Was my first time on the river, and my first time on any river! We launched at Beanies and headed south to check out a tributary that looked like it might be fun. Before we got there some severe weather rolled in and we headed back to the launch with lighting overhead and really heavy rain. We thought for sure the day would be a bust.

Things were starting to look a little less dangerous by the time we got back to the docks, so we decided to have a beer with the boat tied up and see what the weather did. Luckily it passed by and it turned into a beautiful day. Went to a nearby bay, and caught fish constantly for the next 3 hours. Tons of 14-16 inch bass, and 3 smaller northern. A small bright yellow jitterbug was the biggest winner, but shallow cranks were getting em' too.

Was a great day on the river, looking forward to my next visit already.

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TS, thanks for the post, welcome. Sounds like you had a fun day on the river. The Croix can give you days of multiple species like that, glad you were there on a good day.

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What Donbo said....Sometimes she can be hit or miss. If your hitting, its best to try and stay on em, then you'll know were they are. Although there is a lot of river to explore. I grew up on the croix, and still have not seen it all. Lived in Stillwater for 17 years, then Osceola for 5 years. And now live in South Range wich is pretty close to Solon Springs the start of the River (still fish it as often as I can). Gd luck

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Walleyes continue to be put in the box, last week produced some real nice limits, saturday went down to Wabasha prefishing and found the walleyes eager to bite, sunday back on the croix and found walleyes slow but managed to put good ones in the box, today was to recoup and tomorrow I'll start another long stretch of fishing! got this 26 1/2 prefishing

2011-07-23_13_09_12-1.jpg

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Went out fishing this evening and caught 5 saugers and one walleye around the Bluffs. I was only fishing about an hour and a half and it was some nice steady action. Caught them all pulling small Rapalas in 20-25'.

Dan- just wondering when you use plastics at this time of year, are you jigging them off the bottom? I tried it tonight for a little while, with no luck. Probably because I still suck at fishing.

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this evening bite was pretty good, caught walleyes on just about everything we through at them, the guy I had out was rocking the jig and minnow, which produced several boxed white tips, I caught one decent one on crawler, one on a leech and three nice ones on plastics, lots of shorts, plastic again produced three of the biggest walleyes,

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Was out yesterday south of Hudson there doing some bass fishing..a lot of 14-16 inch smallies, didn't catch anything big. Later we roamed around closer to the WI side looking for the gulls to see if we can catch some whities but didn't have any luck (the gulls are out but not feeding), unless someone else has seen different but we didn't see one seagull chase shad.

On a different note, I'm never launching from Beanies again, first time there this year and will be my last time there ever. The owner and I got into it because of his rude personality (1 truck was hit yesterday by a trailer, 2 missing key sets from two different people were missing because employees took them. My set was later found but the other guy wasn't so lucky)and the owner just shrugged and said "I wasn't here all day, I don't know where they put em" and this is 9:45 PM at night after the guy and I looked everywhere for our keys. I did see the small Hudson ramp open so I'll be using that one from now on. I advise everyone and anyone who wants to launch there boats to do the same.

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Was out yesterday south of Hudson there doing some bass fishing..a lot of 14-16 inch smallies, didn't catch anything big. Later we roamed around closer to the WI side looking for the gulls to see if we can catch some whities but didn't have any luck (the gulls are out but not feeding), unless someone else has seen different but we didn't see one seagull chase shad.

On a different note, I'm never launching from Beanies again, first time there this year and will be my last time there ever. The owner and I got into it because of his rude personality (1 truck was hit yesterday by a trailer, 2 missing key sets from two different people were missing because employees took them. My set was later found but the other guy wasn't so lucky)and the owner just shrugged and said "I wasn't here all day, I don't know where they put em" and this is 9:45 PM at night after the guy and I looked everywhere for our keys. I did see the small Hudson ramp open so I'll be using that one from now on. I advise everyone and anyone who wants to launch there boats to do the same.

I can't say I've had any better experiences with Beanies. Last time I launched there, they had about a thousand people running back and forth by the ramp with jet skis/ pontoons. Had no place to park your rig, and also the guys in the bait shop (owner- I assume) was a [PoorWordUsage]- never seen a grumpier guy work at a bait shop in all my life. I use the launch in Hudson now or free launch north of Stillwater if I'm fishing up north.

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i haven't fished the croix for a long time. i went out of beanies one time and one time only years ago. cant remember anything about the owner but the ramp was steep and so were the parking opertunities. just didn't care for the whole set up at the time. i dont know if they changed anything on that regard but it seems the owners personality is not the best along with the workers there.

i remember going accross the bridge there on the cheese side and there was a pay landing [ 10 bucks at the time]. is that the hudson landing your talking about? it was a good landing, worth the money and plenty of parking spots. i would like to go down there at some point and could someone tell me if that is the landing and how is it these days. thanks good luck.

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Haven't been out since last month, but went out today from the Bluffs area. I had a pretty good day with 15 sauger/walleye caught. Only four if them were keepers.

I have the new Lowrance HDS with side and downscan, i was surprised to find an area with different bottom structure/transition along a break line in the middle of the river where I notice fished stcked up. I marked the spot on the sidescan so that the next pass, I could run the raps over that area. Since many of the fish were stcked and higher than normal from the bottom, chances were that they were more junk fish than anything. However, on the first pass, I hooked into a double of saugers. Two more passes produced three more fish with a legal walleye and a keeper sauger. Had I not had the sidescan on at that time, I would have never seen that transition.

Overall, most fishing were caught in about 23-30 feet of water. I did mark quite a few fish in shallower water, but it seemed that the more active fish were a bit deeper today for me.

The day ended up prettybwell, with a fairly consistent bit up until about 11:30, by then, I got tired of the cruisers and boat traffic.

Forgot the crawlers and minnows, so I was running three lines (wife was along) with raps. One guy I was watchig was using minnows and crawlers and using a pretty slow presentation and I noticed he was doing pretty well also. With the pretty good bite, I think I will be back out in the morning.

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ProCor, welcome to the boards! Great report, sounds like you got them dialed in pretty well. Those pesky cruisers can be a bit of a nuisance.

Tunrevir~

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Went out last evening for a quick trip and trolled cranks out of the Bluffs landing. My son and I caught 6 saugers and 1 walleye. The bite seemed to shut off around 8:15 or so, which was the way it was last week too. When it was on though, it was a lot of action.

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Slow morning without catching a single keeper. Fished south of the Kinnie in all of my favorite spots and only caught about 6 walleye and 6 sauger...all of them small. Man, the crappies were very active, ended up catchimg 7 that were between 10-12". I forgot my crawlers, so just ended up pulling cranks. Came across some guys that were fishing crawlers and leeches, but they to only were gettig a few and they were shorts as well.

One of the walleyed I caught spit out a jumbo leech when if came into the boat. Heading back out at 6am tomorrow for another go at it.

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After yesterday's slow bite, I decided to run out again pull some cranks. We were fishing by 6:15am and began with a couple of shorts and that was it. We tried two other spots (same spots as yesterday) and did not pick anything up but a couple more shorts. On our fourth spot, finally, a nice-eating one caught on a Purpetrator in 34 fow, other than that, it was slow. We decided to make a long run to another spot before leaving for the day. I am glad we did, we ended up finding more walleye (and likely some sauger) in 24-35 fow. However, on the HDS, I could tell that the marks in the shallower water were smaller fish (and likely) the shorts and saugers we have been catching. We focused on the deeper water and found active fish. In the last 1.5 hours of fishing , we landed, a 15", 17", 18", 18 1/4" and a 23" (and two more shorts). They really turned on for us from 10:45am until 11:45am which is a little unusual for the bite that we normally experience....but we will take it. If it wasnt for that turn-on and checking a far away spot, we would have had another frustrating and slow day. We had our best luck on purple, blue, firetiger and minnow Rapalas with the purple being the color of choice today. A size #7 seemed to work the best.

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Hey ProCor-

I think that it was you I saw at about 7 in front of the bluffs landing. I was in the gray Crstliner with my son (you and I were talking about paddletails). Glad to hear that you got into some fish! I didn't hang out too long in front of the bluffs but I moved downriver and we caught a few small saugers trolling rapalas. I was marking a ton of fish in deeper water- just like you said- and big fish too- but I could not get them to bite on anything. Of course, we were pulling out right at 10:30, so maybe we missed the bite. I wanted to ask you, when you are pulling cranks in that deep of water, what are you using to get to that depth? The fish I was marking seemed to be hanging right at the bottom.

One good thing that happened though was that we finally got into some white bass. I know a lot of people don't like them, but I really like them. I put them in a cooler on ice right way and they tasted great for lunch!

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Plastics for me have been the ticket, actually have been my go to bait and have been out doing leeches or crawlers by others I've had out the last week

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