St. Croix River Fishing Reports

[Sinker]

Thanks for the report Old Timer. Braver soul than me today. Probably because of the bad memories of the portable skidding across the bare ice with me inside one windy day years ago.

[Ishikawa]

All the snow has melted and now has frozen over! Better conditions than before it rained imo, with the exception that you slide everywhere! Only kept 5 crappies. Did toss back in about 20 smaller ones along with lots of dinky whities. 38 fow, jigging spoons tipped with heads.

Also, the hill going up from the WI access point freezes over pretty good once the sun goes down so plan accordingly. One suv was stuck trying to get up. Me and my rwd ended up crossing over to the MN access.

Anybody ever get a huge school of fish roaming through showing up on the flasher? At first we thought it might be whities, hoping they were crappies, but didn't catch anything out of the group so thinking huge school of baitfish? Was there all afternoon ;-)

[Cheetah]

Slow morning for me on the river. First spot had a couple small crappies so I moved to find bigger fish. Second spot one crappie and one sunfish. Third spot all sunfish and tiny white bass. Slow bite, I caught maybe 6 or so fish total. Various colored jigs with euro larva. Pretty cold out, slick ice, use cleats on your boots if you have em.

[cprguy]

any updates on ice thickness?

[dewey1980]

14 inches

[Cheetah]

Slow bite this morning, but the temperature was nice! I brought home 2 crappies, lost a couple that felt good on the line and threw back one little white bass.

[Ishikawa]

Wow the river was packed this morning. Must have had to do with the nice above freezing temps along with an extremely cold front coming in next two days? On a side not, I finally decided to buy another tape measure and hope it would bring good luck so that I could hope to catch a walleye and have to measure if it was big enough. So, I decided to measure my crappies and I guess I'm off on my size estimations because what I called 8in is actually 9. Why is it thought that once the crappie hits 9in they start to get fat unlike the size differences for those under 9?

Fish report though, they were definitely more finicky today buy still managed to help the nephews catch 7 keepers 9 to 11in. I do know most of the guys fishing around us weren't catching anything though heh ;-)

[Sinker]

Real slow for me. Cheetah you did much better than me as I got the big skunk. Lookers and one bite. Fished south of the open water. I did hear the turkeys chattering up a storm before fly down up on the WI. side hill. Man, I haven't been down to the river in over three weeks but I've never seen so many people fishing down there in all my life as I did today. Good Luck.

[sausageman]

Here are a couple pointers to add another fish or three to the bucket during the slow times.

Being a Wisconsin resident I think I have an advantage over the MN people.....I fish three lines.

If the bite is slow, I use these three lines to narrow down just what the fish want or don't want.

Lately, a minnow presentation has been hot, so I set one tipdown with a medium to large fathead minnow and the other with a large or small crappie minnow. A plain red hook with a sinker or two has been good so that is what I've been using.

Now the pointers.....during the off periods...pay a lot of attention to the size and the action of the minnow. Change out your minnows every 10 to 15 minutes and go through the spectrum of minnow sizes keeping track on what sizes you are using. If you get a fish on a certain minnow size search the bucket to find it's twin.

I've been sharpening my hooks lately and I think it makes a difference, but not how you think. I think a super sharp hook causes less damage to the smaller minnows, therefore I get livelier small minnows. If the point of the hook feels like you're pushing a screwdriver through the skin it's dull.

The trend lately has been to smaller minnows, so a nice lively minnow seems to be triggering more fish.

Fiska's always seems to get me fish, but if the crappies are giving that presentation the finger, I usually have a third tipdown or slip bobber ready to go.

Hope this helps.

[sausageman]

The top picture is of a 13" crappie caught today on a very small lively crappie minnow and a red hook and the bottom picture is a 14" crappie I caught yesterday on a medium size fathead and a red hook. Both of these fish were released after I took the picture.

Yesterday was a lot better for me then today. Today I ended up taking home 6 crappies between 9 1/2" and 11"

[cheets]

SM

Hats off to you! While it's every anglers personal choice, it's nice to see trophy crappies going back.

cheets

[old timer]

Great Post SM. Thanks for the reminders to keep trying something different, and not sticking with what worked last week. In regards to c and r, I need to discipline myself to reel up slowly so as to not kill the fish.

[Ishikawa]

Ah, a white crappie. Have caught a lot more of those this year than last year, especially bigger ones! And I second SM's post! Lazy fishing is the way to go ;-)

[GSP4ME]

where is the closest baitshop in Hudson

[sausageman]

Holiday across from the Dairy Queen. Mostly minnows some maggots and such.

[GSP4ME]

thanks.

hey if you a ever going to be out there and are willing toshow arookie sometips let me know. I havemy portable, marcum and my auger . Justneed some ideas of how to fish the river during hardwater. I'mgoing totry it the next couple of days

[Ishikawa]

gonna brave the weather tomorrow morning since its one of two days I have off this week :-)

[GSP4ME]

I'm goingto try and be out there for the morning bite I've beenhearing about. Got to try the newequipment

[old timer]

Hey GSP4me,

Take a look at the threads "fishing reports" and " lure staples". They contain a ton of useful info.

[GSP4ME]

ok got out of work really late last night. I am going to try and doing some scouting on the croix today spend a lot of time drilling holes and watching the Marcum. I am not looking for anyones secret hole but would like an idea of where to start. would love to ice some crappies and wonder if I should be looking for hard bottom, transition sharp drops or what am I looking for

[GeluNumber1]

Are crappies the only thing biting, or are there other fish worth targeting?

Tight lines.

[old timer]

The crappies cruise the basin. They generally hang in the deeper water, 36 - 40 feet, but can be found anywhere. Since they cruise, you might mark fish, and by the time you are fishing, they have moved on. My experience with this cold weather has been to mark fish and not have them bite like they had been for the last 3 weeks. This should ease up some when the barometer stabilizes. Some of the people who have a lot more experience on the Croix have developed several techniques to combat lockjaw. Read past posts for specifics. I know this is pretty general, but you have to put in your time and learn from others. (Which the folks on this forum are great about). Good Luck

[GSP4ME]

sitting on the Croix now marcum looks likea Christmas tree but only coaxed two Iinto beingvBulletinfriendly

[Ishikawa]

Made it to the river yesterday morning. crappies were on the feed early and were biting from 730, when we got there, till 930. after that they moved and were not in the usual spots. once again plain red hook with small crappie minnow performed well. jigging spoons with head were catching also, but catching more of the smaller crappies compared to plain minnow. wish we had made it out sooner to see when the bite started!

[old timer]

38 fow, minnows, fiska, spring bobber, north of crappie town, flurry at 8:50 and 9:20 after that distracted by: new heater going out,(bang on it to repair),cap for thermos breaking, wind shifting and picking up trying to blow the house away, dead battery on vehicle when tried to move it to block the wind.(jump start from buddy who joined me). Pretty amusing actually.

[WalleyeChaser]

38 fow, minnows, fiska, spring bobber, north of crappie town, flurry at 8:50 and 9:20 after that distracted by: new heater going out,(bang on it to repair),cap for thermos breaking, wind shifting and picking up trying to blow the house away, dead battery on vehicle when tried to move it to block the wind.(jump start from buddy who joined me). Pretty amusing actually.

At least something was active out there!

[Ishikawa]

38 fow, minnows, fiska, spring bobber, north of crappie town, flurry at 8:50 and 9:20 after that distracted by: new heater going out,(bang on it to repair),cap for thermos breaking, wind shifting and picking up trying to blow the house away, dead battery on vehicle when tried to move it to block the wind.(jump start from buddy who joined me). Pretty amusing actually.

hope your spot is doing great! thinking mine got pressured due to the amount of holes that we see are around in between trips. didn't have much of any new holes between trips before but now, different story :-(

[klee]

Fished today from 6am-10 outside of the permie town In 36 fow for two hrs marking fish here and there but they wouldn't take anything. Jigging Spoons with waxie and minnows. Deadstick with Red hook with minnnow. Fiska with waxie and plastic. They would come by and stare. Put the camera down and saw a tail of a big fish. Few minutes later, something hit the camera as they were swimming by. We moved to 30 fow and marked some but not as much as the other spot. Put the camera down again and spotted a crappie staring at us for a while before swimming off. No takers today. Called it a day.

Looking to target some white bass. My first year fishing the croix during hardwater. Where should i look and how deep???

[Fisherman For a Lifetime]

I fished from 5:50am to 1pm today.

Got Crappies from 5:55am to 7am. Nothing after that.

[old timer]

Fished today from 6am-10 outside of the permie town In 36 fow for two hrs marking fish here and there but they wouldn't take anything. Jigging Spoons with waxie and minnows. Deadstick with Red hook with minnnow. Fiska with waxie and plastic. They would come by and stare. Put the camera down and saw a tail of a big fish. Few minutes later, something hit the camera as they were swimming by. We moved to 30 fow and marked some but not as much as the other spot. Put the camera down again and spotted a crappie staring at us for a while before swimming off. No takers today. Called it a day.

Looking to target some white bass. My first year fishing the croix during hardwater. Where should i look and how deep???

Looks like you are on the right track. Are you using a foam or spring bobber? Sometimes when they are finicky, all you will notice is a little dip of the spring bobber, and I mean little (1/2 inch.) When they are on a tear, they will bend it down 2 inches. Also the fish you are marking could be schools of baitfish, schools of tiny white bass, individual white bass etc. Or as your camera showed, finicky crappies. We have also been able to tempt them by agressively jigging something flashy to pull them in and they may bite on the deadstick. As far as water depth, for me, deeper is better, but that depends where you are set up in the basin. Hope this helps. Good luck and hang in there.