POOL 2 ON THE 4TH

[rosspj59]

Fished the middle section of pool 2 in the morning concentrating on wingdams which produced zilch. We pulled the boat out to gas up and moved to hidden falls to fish the upper part of pool 2 for the first time. Trolling cranks produced some small to average sized walleyes, some smallies, one decent sauger, and one pike. The boat traffic was pretty heavy, but we still had a good time. The current up there really moves!

[Lunker]

Shore fished pool 2 for a while today, managed one little smallie. Any one else had shore success recently?

[Fisher Dave]

Lunker.. check your email.

[rosspj59]

Was back out on pool 2 yesterday and caught a few walleyes and sauger on the wingdams. They seemed to like k grubs over anything else. Tried cranks with no takers. Also saw a small flock of turkeys standing on the shoreline, you never know what your gonna catch or see on the mighty Miss.

[Mike W]

You say it was a plastic day yesterday. Last few weeks it has been mostly crankbaits on the wingdams for me. I still never leave a spot with out throwing a plastic or hair jig at it. You just never know. Any one ever try pitching meat to the wingdams? Seems like alot of guys in the pools down river like pitching meat during the summer. Not sure if I could bring myself to trying this. Its just to cruel to the bait.

[rosspj59]

Mike, I tried crawlers and caught white bass and sheephead on sunday. I do usually try using bait too, but I love the way the walleyes hit the plastics so I tend to use them the most. Some of the slack water areas were producing sauger/walleyes on minnows for others. My biggest wingdam walleye last year on pool 3 was caught on a crawler.

[Mike W]

Yep. A guy gets spoiled with the way those eyes will nail a plastic. It is alot of fun to take a lake fisherman out who is used to rigging and get him ona good pitching bite. That first smack on the end of the line and they look confused. Trying to get them used to a quick hook set insteed of feeding the fish line or pauseing to let the fish take the bait. Then whats next is trying to get them to hold the rod in the right position. It seems alot of these guys hold the rod tip way up to try and feel small nibbles. This puts the rod tip at the end of the hook set. By the time you drop the tip the fish is gone. Some of these guys have been doing this for years and it can be tough to get them to hold the rod closer to the water. Fishing plastics a quick hook set is where it is at. Not much need for bite detection.

Okay. Im ready to hit the water again.

[EBass]

What's the closest launch to the wing dams? I'm always going to Hidden Falls.

[Dave B]

494 has them upstream and down, 10 or so within 2-4 miles of the ramp.

[Fisher Dave]

There are some old(not visable) wing dams around lilydale also.. much better launch than Hidden falls to boot.

[EBass]

Thanks fellas. One of these days I'll make it down there.

[Lunker]

I shore fished around hidden falls today with decent success. Only fished for about an hour and a half but managed a few fish. Fished with jig and plastics, and an xrap. Caught two of the bigger crappie I've caught on the jig, white w/ pink head, both fish probaly around 12". Also caught one 22" pike on the xrap. Caught the fish in pretty shallow, out of the main current and not near a current break, so that was a little odd, but I think they were in chasing schools of baitfish that were in the shallows. Didn't catch squat on topwaters or tubejigs. Bass didn't want any part of it this time.

[BigMike]

Hit shores of hidden falls on Saturday for 30minutes on my way to maple lake out west and got 4 fish on 4 casts all on a white spinnerbait. 15'' smallie, 15'' white bass (biggest white bass I've seen, probably 2.5-3+lbs!), 19'' walleye and a mini pike (10''). Hit a spot I know and jetted out to the lake to meet up with a buddy. With pool2 you can never know what's on your line until you reel it in.

[EBass]

With these real warm water temps the smallies will go deep. They are a cool water fish. The last time I was there about 2 weeks ago we didn't catch a smallie by the dam. But the sheepies were everywhere and nuts! We did find a school of smallies down stream that made the day!