Pete (Driftmaster) Yake and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Fox River in De Pere, WI a few days ago…
Over the years we have “honed in” on techniques that separate us from those that stick with the old school jig/minnow
presentation. Not that minnows don’t work…it just that, with 39 degree water temps and mostly Pre Spawn females moving up, plastics/reaction baits just have had a much higher success rate for the past several years…
We started at about 7 am and already there were 25-30 boats on the river. We normally find fish along the channel contour breaks and work over them drifting and vertical jigging Super Dos and Paddle tails.
But since Rapala released the Rippin Rap a few years ago we have changed to working hard bottom transitions and sand edges near deeper waterwith #5 RRaps and Moxies on a jig.
After some light hits and misses we decided to downsize our jigs from 3/16…still not hooking up so down to a 1/16…BANGO!
It was pretty much constant action for the next 4 hours…All but two Eyes were between 21 and 26″ with many of then 23″ clones…all fat with spawn like blimps. Final score 21 on plastics, 4 on Rippin Raps. I cast jigs with a custom AV69MLXF using 4# Gamma HI Viz Polyflex line…a great small diameter, limp and very strong copolymer. RRaps with a custom LEX 69MLXF using Sufix 832 6# Ghost with a 8# fluoro leader. You may only kill one Walleye 28″ or over but it is a great way to get the winter rust off your game and have a ball!
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