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River Newby...


crankybaiter

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I'm new to the St Croix River fishing and am looking for advice mostly on presentations.

One of my favorite fishing techniques is snapweights and side planer boards pulling cranks or live bait rigs. We've more or less mastered the system on Lake Michigan salmon and steelhead. Does anybody use this method on the river? Also, I'm surprised to see that crawlers seemed to be the bait of choice this early... are crawlers generally the best bait over leeches/minnows/crankbaits?

Thanks for whatever info any of you might have. Looking forward to seeing you sometime on the beautiful River.

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CB, look at the past forums and you can find alot of info on techniques, presentations for the river. I use all of those techniques you listed on the Croix especially down south of Stillwater where it is deep and wide. Planers work well, as do spinners and even snap weights. Don't overlook the old river standby the threeway rig either as you can deliver cranks deep with that method as well. Can't go wrong with spinners but you may have to deal with alot of pesky other fish compared to running cranks. You should do just fine with the methods you mentioned.

Tunrevir~ cool.gif

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Thanks... I'm glad you mentioned the three-way rig. I'm reading about the various combinations in an excellent article in In-Fisherman.

Man, it's funny how time goes around/comes around... My dad introduced me to walleye trolling back around 1950... his and his partner's favorite presentation was a 3-way swivel with a minnow strip-on spinner - and heavy line that today would seem like rope. I'll bet there's a lot of fisherpeople here who've never heard of a strip-on spinner... smirk.gif

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Cranky,

A lot of the good walleye spots are on the breaklines and I don't know anyone that can run boards well on the breaklines, sure you can hit and miss, but it's not a common presentation on the St. Croix. With that said there are spots that boards work but that's on a flat.

Good luck,

Turk

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Quote:

strip-on spinner?

I don't know what that is...


Slipperybob, it was a real common way to livebait rig years ago, kind of like and inline spinner tipped with live bait. The main "body" was just a heavy wire leader with a spinnerblade located at the top of the wire and a hook below.

Tunrevir~

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Quote:

Quote:

strip-on spinner?

I don't know what that is...


Slipperybob, it was a real common way to livebait rig years ago, kind of like and inline spinner tipped with live bait. The main "body" was just a heavy wire leader with a spinnerblade located at the top of the wire and a hook below.

Tunrevir~


Thanks Tunrevir,

I've seen that before in magazines years back. I just didn't know that is what it's called.

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They are made locally and there was a great article in the Pioneer Press this spring about them. I have a 1/2 dozen with the packaging from about 1950. Cool stuff!

Tunrevir~

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