Birchdale

[side_laker]

Anyone getting sturgeon out of birchdale landing. I am coming up Tuesday or Wednesday and wondering if there is good fishing out of birchdale or if I should head to the lake area. 

[rschmidty]

I saw somewhere that people this past weekend did well out of Birchdale and those fishing the Gap and WP were only getting small ones. 

[side_laker]

Thanks for the reply. I am heading up in the morning planning to fish the birchdale area 

[rschmidty]

Good luck!

Watch out for the redhorse/sucker bite. It's really bad this year. We usually set our rods in a holder during calm conditions and we had to resort to holding our rods at all times to reduce how much bait was being stolen.

[side_laker]

It was slow today. We saw one sturgeon landed and one surfaced 50 feet behind our boat. We caught 2 suckers and one 1oz lead jig head. All in all was a great day just being out with a line in the water 

[side_laker]

Any new reports from the last couple days. I am taking my dad up tomorrow for his birthday. Wondering if I should go all the way to the lake or if stopping at birchdale is worth it. 

[rschmidty]

We were up the past Friday and Saturday. It was pretty slow for us but what we did catch were good sized. They opened the dam at International Falls on 4/24 which caused the river to go up 3 feet and double in current speed. This made the water really dirty and a lot of crap floating down the river and getting stuck on you line.The river has come back down a couple of feet and the current slowed by about 50% since Saturday. Also, Sturgeon were jumping all around us so they were there but getting them to bit was another story.

Every report I've seen and everyone we talked to said it was slow for them too regardless of what part of the river they were fishing. There was one report I saw that was good and they were fishing out by the gap and wheeler's point. They mentioned that people around them weren't catching very much and they really relied on their side imaging to locate fish. They would wait until they marked a couple of sturgeon then anchor and fish and moved frequently. They also said they marked some fish in or near deeper holes but the majority of fish were in between holes are well before them.

I have side imaging on my boat but have only had it for a short period of time so I haven' developed the confidence to interpret what I'm seeing to intentionally fish a specific sturgeon or two. Something to work on, but there are sturgeon angles I really respect and they will use their mapping and depth finder to locate a good looking spot and then use side imaging to actually locate the fish. The hole is just a starting point. It's these guys that are putting fish in the boat the most consistently because sturgeon seem to be less affected than other fish by tough conditions but current, temp, etc...may change were they are located.

Anyway, short story long I don't think where you fish will be as important as locating them.

Good luck!

[side_laker]

Thanks for the info. Just got back from up there. We ended up with nothing but we saw 7 large sturgeon surface with in 20 yards of the boat but never got one to hook up. Picked up one 8 inch pout. Fished out of wheelers landing and moved all over. But still fun day fishing with the old man can't get much better.