anyone fishing pool 4?

[fishfearme]

Planning on heading down there wednesday. Just wanted to know if the smallies are moving up on peppin or should I look toward the backwaters. Whats the water temp also? I'll give a report on thursday.

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Shut up and fish!

[RossT]

I was out last Wednesday. The water temp varied from 47 - 51 degrees. Caught seven keeper (over 14") smallmouth and some short fish also. All of the "keeper" size fish were from 2 1/2 to 4lbs. Look in four to seven feet of water on northern facing banks. Sand or gravel was key.

Ross

[fishfearme]

What a beautiful day! Water temp in the morning was a cool 48. By afternoon it hit 59 in some areas. Caught 6 smallies and 1 bigmouth and lots of sheephead.

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Shut up and fish!

[Dan Wood]

4/17
Pretty good action for the buckets... Water temps in the a.m. 49.5 in the main channel, up to 62 in the afternoon in some of the backwaters..

Here is my first good bass of '04 - 19"... Feels great to be back on open water! Catch-N Tackle Ring-N tubes, spinnerbaits, jerkbaits, and jigs...

[This message has been edited by Dan Wood (edited 04-18-2004).]

[ChrisR71]

Dan,

That's a great fish!

I got totally humbled yesterday on pool 4. 0 fish and a sunburn!

The river was 5' lower than it was 2 weeks ago. I have only fished pool 4 twice now and have yet to find fish. I tried sloughs and shallow water but no takers. I saw carp jumping but that's it. The water was pretty dirty. My buddy caught 1 small bass when we made a run down to the north end of pepin but that's it.

I notice your picture is next to shore. If I may ask, how deep were you fishing and what did you catch them on? Were you in the backwaters or by the main channel?

I'm not too proud to say that I need to learn to fish the river. So far, I'm completely puzzled. I do well on all the lakes I have fished, but rivers are not as easy for me.

Any tips?

Thanks!

Chris

[Dan Wood]

Hey Chris,
Some of the fish are up shallow ready to spawn with the temps as warm as they were. That could change now with the rains. There are also a lot of fish still staging from what we could tell - those are holding deeper adjacent to spawning areas now. More fish moved up as the day went on with the very warm temps. Usually about 55 deg. will get the fish moving shallow to start thinking about spawning (a lot of the waters are above that now).

The fish in the photo was up on a small ledge in about 2' where it drops down to 10'.

I'd start in the 2-10' depths at this time of year until you find out where the active fish are. This will be changing daily this time of year as fish are nearing the spawn, but is a good starting point. Good luck!

[BigMike]

Dan,

Looks like a beauty! I'm jealous! I got out with Ebass this last weekend hoping to find some smallies from shore on Pool 2 but nada! We covered A LOT of shoreline and only ended up catching a handful of crappies and a bunch of sheepshead, including the one that I landed easily pushing over 6lbs!!! It was huge! Nasty fish, but fun to battle with!

I'm looking forward to getting out down on pool 4 in a couple weeks but with all of this nice weather we've had I think it's going to be post-spawn patterns by May 1st from the sounds of your report.

Keep up the great job on the forum Dan!