St. Louis River Walleyes still biting.

[dpirila]

Fishing on the St. Louis River is still great. It seems that the big eyes are staying in the river, eating and getting fat. Many upto 28-30" are being caught trolling and bouncing. If you have a favorite technique, lure, color or trick let's share it. This is a great fishery so please practice CPR.

------------------
Doug Pirila
http://www.fishingwebmaster.com

[Rick]

Let's welcome Doug Pirila,
a fishing fanatic from the Duluth area.

Welcome aboard Doug!!!!!

[Bigred70]

Been fishing the ST. Louis hard for the past two weeks. Last weekend's cold front seemed to shut them down HARD, with the fish moving out deep into the river channels (sometimes 20+ FT.!) Earlier that week, we pounded them around bouy 58 and 59 in 6-10 ft. One evening, a friend and I must have caught and released 40 walleyes, and snapped off one nice walleye boatside (around 5 lbs). We were at first pulling bouncers with spinners, and only had slight success. We discovered that the rigs ran too high off the bottom in the shallow water, switched to jigs, dragging the bottom, and that was THE ticket! Kinda fun catching fish while people are surrounding you getting skunked! Both orange and pink in 1/4oz. with half a crawler worked well. Now with this cold weather, we have yet to find a consistent pattern, but the fish are deep, and when caught, are usually small. Hopefully we get some stable weather before it's too late! How about everyone else? Any luck recently? It would be great to get into some fantastic walleye fishing again! Thanks all!

[Xplorer]

Welcome Doug! Good to see someone from the area on the board.
Have been picking up smaller fish (12-17")on the edge of the channel and 10-12' flats around buoy 35 all summer, lindy rig and leech/crawler. With this stable front things may pickup for the weekend, anyone else gonna be out there?? Will try to get out early am on sat and sunday. Anyone had any success trolling deep in the channel? I've had little, always seem to do better when I go shallower evenup to 3' sometimes. Look out for those 'ski's in the spirit lake area, have seen some good size ones cruising. Good luck to all out this weekend. Xplorer

[dpirila]

Bigred70 has the pattern that I was on last night. We caught two eyes while checking on the crappie bite. Both were in 3'-6' of water and took small jigs and minnows. They both went over 20". Our fishing league has also been having many walleyes come in this last couple weeks. Yes the cold front shut them down, but they recover much quicker in the river. Gotta love that. I will be on the river again tonight and all day Sat. Then Monday is another league night on it. I will let everyone know how it goes. Hey Xplorer did any of the skis follow? I would really like to put one of them in the boat.

------------------
Doug Pirila
http://www.fishingwebmaster.com

[Xplorer]

Doug,
Two small ski's this year, 32 and 34 while trolling plugs for eye's, but have seen fish over 40 in the shallow weeds sunning themselves. Have also caught them in the harbor, a couple of falls ago c/r'd a 37" tha t was almost devoid of markings except for a few spots on the tail, almost silver in color. Figured it might be a lake fish following the shiner run. Never intentionally fished for them (not set up for them) but may have to one of these days. Xplorer

[dpirila]

Thanks Xplorer, I have caught a small muskie that was very silver colored too, this year. I have also been seeing big muskies. Had one on last Aug. to the boat, tail touched, my fishing partner just sat in awe as it rolled up my line and broke off. That was on Spirit Lake too. It was an easy 30+ pound fish, just inches from me. I am almost out of therapy for that encounter now. There are many big skis on the river, topwaters and bucktails are a great way to get them now.

Good luck fishing.

------------------
Doug Pirila
http://www.fishingwebmaster.com