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St. Croix River Fishing Reports


Joe

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9/28 Was dead sticking big chubs and jigging plastics with the other rod no takers on the chubs but the smallies were tearing up plastics along with 3 real nice walleyes pulled alittle cable but only produced shorts, nice night on the water

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I'm pretty new to fishing the St Croix. Just bought a boat this year and wanted to find some decent walleye fishing around home and have always heard good things about the river. Been going out of St Croix Bluffs and fishing around Prescott and the Kinni. Seem to manage 1 15" walleye every time I go out. Was wondering if anyone had some tips for me or if anyone ever wanted to meet up and go fishing down there. Always room in my boat for 1 more! Usually get out Mondays or Tuesday mornings.

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Was wondering if anyone had some tips for me

Sure here is a tip...find the bait balls on your graph...walleyes are completely putting on the feedbag...got 12 keepers today from 7 to noon.

Keep catchin'

Turk

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First, a big "Thank You" to Turk,RiverDan,Dale,ProCor, and all the others who share their wisdom on this site. Your posts are very helpful to those of us who are not so wise.

My question is, Once you find the bait balls, what, and how, do you use to catch the fish? Do you drag something thru the middle of the ball, or do you work the bottom below the ball with jigs/rigs etc.?

anybody care to share their thoughts?

THANKS AGAIN.

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I have been out on the Croix for some eyes a few times a couple of weeks ago and I must say, I had a tough time out there. I went to all my favorite spots that typically produce, but caught only a few walleyes and saugs...and they were mostly shorts. Out of three times, I only brought home one fryer.

All the spots were holding fish, however, they just were not feeding or active. I kept in touch with all of the reports over the past couple of weeks and there seems to be mixed results with the majority of them pretty tough except for those with lots of experience on the river.

It sounds like things may have picked up a bit, and I will likely head out there early next week (or this weekend if the wife allows) to give her another go at it. I still think that the best it yet to come (and begin) in a couple more weeks.

So, since I had a couple of tough days out there, I decided to spend trips up to Mille Lacs to troll leadcore for some eyes. That has been a blast. At times it got slow, but when the eyes were active, they were active. I also think it is a bit slower up there right now and will only get better in a short while.

I thought I would share my biggest northern ever caught to my Croix pals. I caught it on Mille Lacs trolling leadcore 30' down in 33' of water. It measured 41" long. It was nice and healthy and had a beautiful release. The three lines of leadcore that were in the water were a mess as she took many runs before we realized we had a big one on and had time to reel up the other lines. Trying to untangle leadcore is not fun!

41inchNorthernsmall.jpg

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Once you find the bait balls, what, and how, do you use to catch the fish? Do you drag something thru the middle of the ball, or do you work the bottom below the ball with jigs/rigs etc.?

anybody care to share their thoughts?

Once you find the bait, your best bet is going to be to work the bottom. If you see hooks arcing up into the bait, you might have a good shot at jigging fish higher up, but the odds are you'll get more walleye off the bottom.

Generally I'll pull cranks or rigs at a good clip until I locate the most active fish, then slow it down if desired.

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Don't get discouraged if you don't catch many. They may not be as active as they will be in a couple of weeks. When trolling, be open to try different colors/sizes as well as varying your speed and/or doing some small S-turns to make speed changes. If this doesn't produce much, try and located some fish that are either a bit shallower or deeper than what you are marking and see if those fish are more active.

Another thing that I will do with my Lowrance is mark all the areas where I notice larger and/or more numerous fish and if it is slow, I will try dragging some plastic and/or try live bait (minnows/crawlers/leeches) on lindy-style rigs as well as vertical jigging. The fish will eventually tell you what they want. If you come across areas that have weeds around 4"-8" on the bottom..you may want to scout that area and around it, I have had some good success there. I think they hold more bait fish and some eyes are usually not too far away.

This is what I have been doing - a lot of change in presentation, speed and colors...and I have not been doing well the last three times out. For me, it has been slow...but it will get crazy soon. Good luck. Oh yeah, my favorite colors of cranks have been firetiger, purpledescent, blue and traditional Rapala silver. Give us a report...I will also be out this weekend or on Mon or Tues.

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was out playing in the wind yesterday afternoon/evening couldn't believe I was the only one out down by prescott, battled waves and some rain and it took abit but I found bait holding deep off a sharp drop and right below was nice hooks, toss a marker and it was game on, the marker allows me to have better control to stay on top of the fish in white caps about ever 4th wave or so came over the back spash and I loved every minute of it plus the fact the walleyes were willing to bite, picked up six nothing real big but go eaters all caught on jig and paddletails, highlite was this cat fish in thirty plus feet on plastics

300463_197650620306637_100001851020993_4

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Great day on the river today. Panfish are still hungry & so are the Suckers.

Water temp = 63 degrees.

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Caught my first-ever musky on the St. Croix today. Casting to a shallow, rocky shoreline with a silver/blue Yo-Zuri HydroMag. It was 44." swam away fine after CPR. Here's a pic:

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904327e1.jpg

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Nice job Herky! Great fish. I hit the Croix this weekend with my son for a bit of jigging. We caught crappies, perch, rockbass, walleyes, pike but surprisingly no smallies. Fished 1/8-1/4 oz jigs and fatheads in 12-30' of water. Most productive area for us was in 18-23'. Definately a great weekend to be on the water.

Tunrevir~

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Went out of Afton with my girlfriend yesterday. What a great day for boating! I havent fished the Croix before or boated on it in many many years. I was amazed at the boat traffic. I bet it can get really busy out there. Once church was out everybody was on the water! I fished between Afton and Prescott. Was hoping to catch a couple walleyes, but only got one catfish at Prescott. Fishing was very hard. Could all the boat traffic have something to do with this? We tried jigging for a while with fatheads in 20-30 FOW, then dragged cranks at 20' through bait schools, then went back to jigging. In one location fish were jumping everywhere, but we couldnt hook a thing. Threw different baits to no avail. I thought they could have been white bass. Anyhow, I guess I need to put my time in out there and do some searching. Are there stretches of river that you guys have better luck at? Can you recommend other launch sites? Windmill Marina is really nice, but $21 to launch each time adds up in a hurry. Thanks guys!

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I waited from noon to 1pm before i could load my boat at the boomsite in stillwater...then a 30m drive through stillwater...Yeah It Was BUSY!!

I guess some argument broke out at the landing - go figure. After i pulled my boat out, i watched 3 guys launch their boat with no place to park their trailers sicklaugh

I love when you see 5 boats lined up, and nobody removes their boat cover until its their turn to launch crazy

$21 would have been worth it yesterday!

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Can you recommend other launch sites? Windmill Marina is really nice, but $21 to launch each time adds up in a hurry. Thanks guys!

The Bluffs Park has a real nice boat launch and you pay once for a park sticker that is good for a year or you can launch in Prescott (if you are going to fish there anyway). Kind of funny that you launched in Afton and went to Prescott and I motored through Prescott and headed up to a spot South of Afton.

Around the Prescott area this year I have been catching a lot of sub 14" fish so over the weekend I made the trip to a few spots South of Afton. Saturday in less than 4 hours we caught 20+ Walleye/Sauger with 6 of the Walleyes in the 16 to 19" range. On Sunday 5 Walleye and 1 Sauger in the 17 to 19" were boated in under 2 hours with multiple White Bass and small Saugers thrown in the mix. Some of the White Bass were monsters and really put up a good fight. On both days most of the fish were caught in 28 to 32 FOW on natural color Rapalas.

On the Saturday trip we decided to change things up a bit. Put away the hand lines and got out the plastics and minnows. Fished the same area that we were picking up fish on Rapalas and could not even get a White Bass to take a minnow or plastics. Tried for over 1/2 hour, switched back to dragging Rapalas and within 5 minutes had a nice fish to finish out the day. Quite often I will switch tactics just to see what else is working. I don't recall ever having a problem catching fish when switching to live bait. Must be an anomaly.

Speaking of live bait, a week ago I decided to get out the slip bobber rigs because I had not run slip bobbers all summer. Forgot just how relaxing slip bobber fishing can be. Caught plenty of smaller fish and a nice size Sheepie. I will be getting out the slip bobbers again real soon.

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Nice report Dale.

I was with my buddy on Sunday pulling cranks with bottom bouncers at about 1-1.3 mph and even leadcore and all we caught was a rock bass and a tiny spotted flathead catfish (very weird lookinggrin ). I guess we were fishing too shallow at 18-25 feet. mad

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That was probably a small channel cat, lots of them in there. Grey with black spots?

Anyway, this is a great time of the year on the river!

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Definitely a small flathead. Best way to describe it was a brown camoflage. No small black spots like small channels have. My friend had to use 2 pliers so he wouldn't have to touch it. laugh

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I was out on the river last night, we caught a wack of walleyes off the flats,

I got kinda bored with all that, so we decided too go see if any big~girls

were playing... and well the rest is history !

full-34906-12800-js800_hpim2338.jpg

full-34906-12801-js800_hpim2340.jpg

see you all out there, peace.

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I made it out to prescott this morning and found the confluence to be relatively slow. Didn't pick up anything trolling or vertical jigging with fatheads. Switch to rigging fatheads and caught two shorts.

Congrats to Paul Miller who caught this nice Pike from shore as I was floating by:

full-26446-12841-20111006083552.jpg

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Anyone else go out in the wind today? Fished from around 11:00 till 5:00 pulled cranks everywhere between Prescott and the Kinnie, not even a sheepshead was biting. Finally picked up three walleye at the Kinnie on crawlers late in the day, all 15-16". Worked my butt off for those three fish. Hope to get out in the morning for my last Croix trip of the year.

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slow weekend for us. ended up with 4 short sturg, 2 carp, 7 small-medium smallies, 1 white bass, 1 BIG sunnie, 1 12" eye, 1 slimer, 2 suckers, & 1 perch. we put alot of hours in for those fish. i can usually find a good pattern on smallies this time of year but couldnt even pin them down.

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I think there's a LOT less fish in the St. Croix, especially Walleyes, and it declined about 4 years ago. Sure we catch some, but not like 5 years ago & through the past.

But as soon as I bring it up it gets shot down. Oh well.

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It wouldnt be a big suprise if fish populations are down.With more people fishing local,better technology,high bag limits,and no monitoring of fish populations it can happen.A bad spawning year or two can also affect some year classes.Start it up as a separate topic out of the reports and see what you get.

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This question if for the guys jigging with plastics for walleye/sauger.

Does one size plastic seem to work better over another, like 2" vs. 3". Do you typically rig with a 1/4 oz jig? (I know it depends on current conditions). Thanks!

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This question if for the guys jigging with plastics for walleye/sauger.

Does one size plastic seem to work better over another, like 2" vs. 3". Do you typically rig with a 1/4 oz jig? (I know it depends on current conditions). Thanks!

Generally I will use 3" paddletails or 4" ringworms on a 3/8 oz jig when working vertical and will go with a lighter jig for dragging or if I'm sitting on fish in an area with very little current.

Wind and the line you are using can also play a role in your ability to detect a bite. Most of the time when vertical jigging the fish will take the bait when the bait is being dropped. If you don't have enough weight to keep your line taught during the drop you will miss many bites.

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Made it back out on Saturday morning to find that the eyes were a bit more active which was nice to see. We got out early in the morning, but found that they were on the bite for only about an hour and a half to two hours in the mid morning before they 'turned off'. We worked a few areas where we normally fished, however, changed up tactics a bit. We noticed that some walleyes were suspended following some large pods of baitfish; some were very very large. We were able to locate some smaller pods and noticed that there were not only some suspended eyes around the pod, but also some on the bottom and/or 1-2' off the bottom. We rigged up with cranks so we could cover more water and did very well. For the first time, I decided to run two lines of leadcore out to run one at about 17' were some were suspended as well as another leadcore line down to about 4 feet from the bottom. The other two lines were running stick-type baits closer to the bottom. Surprisingly, all lines did equally well. For the first time, we had a triple on, but with the chaos, we only reeled one in. The surface temps were about 61 degrees. I thought it would be cooler...but, the fishing only gets better from here on out.

Here is the biggest of the day..a 23.5"...they sure get fat eating shad. She was safely released. We ended up with some nice 15.5-16.5" eaters in the box.

Markresized2.jpg

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i'm hitting the saint croix north of st. croix falls, north of wild mountain tomorrow. is there an access on the minnesota side of wild river state park (just north of wild mountain)? one shows up in my minnesota atlas.

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We were out this morning with Turk from Croixsippi. The weather was a bit cool and windy, but we ended up taking 8 home. We had a few shorts and one 24" released to fight another day. The best catch of the day came from my sister when she reeled in the pole I had dropped over the side of the boat about 35 minutes early - amazing. I'm sure I'll never live it down. Thanks to Turk for teaching us about the river, and for putting us on the fish (and the pole).

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