Red Wing Landings 3.27.22

Well with a temp at the landings today hanging around 21 degrees at noon, I wasn’t expecting much for traffic at the ramps. They weren’t half full, but still plenty of boats out.

I spoke with 3 boats and the said the same thing. “Tight lips”.

Now not being out myself, I’m guessing it has more to do with the rising water level but that’s just a guess. Water temp dropped 5 degrees over night.

I was off on Bay Point opening up tomorrow. But it will be open by next weekend.

Photos below are of Bay Point, Colvill and the Wisconsin Back Channel. Not much to worry about hitting the closing dam since the water is up 5’ from this spring.

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Really appreciate these updates, thanks!

Thanks BK

Thanks for the update! Was supposed to go down this weekend, but pushed it back to next weekend. Hoping for some more favorable weather!

Looks like the river will have it’s “first” crest tomorrow at about 7.0′. Once it starts melting up Nort we could see some more flow.

BUT unless we get some heavy rains, I’m thinking 2022 will be the flood that wasn’t!

Agreed. I don’t foresee a major flooding event. As the frost continues to work its way out of overly dry soils, the ability to soak up the rain will keep flooding chances minimal as well. It does look like we may get enough precipitation to hold things at this level though (which is good for fishing in my opinion).

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^ Agreed…good for all spawning too!

With the low water most of last year, the weed grew into the dry river bed to the waters edge. Keeping the stage around 7 feet has flooded all of that and we could have a great walleye spawn (amongst other species) this year.

I’m going to have to check in with the Large Lakes Specialist.

X10……appreciate these as well! Love the higher water! So far it’s setting up nicely for a good spring bite.

Thanks BK.

We went on Saturday, and we ran the WI channel from the head of the lake to the dam on Friday. Good to go if you know the path and want to avoid the no wake zones. Been a while since we were able to take that route up.

Typically we use April 15th as our benchmark for Walleye spawning. On Pool 4 the best Walleye spawning conditions seem to be high or rising water levels by April 15th with an extended period of high water and slow drop following. The theory behind this is that Walleye seem to prefer spawning in flooded terrestrial vegetation in Pool 4 and the high water gives them access to that while the continued high levels and slow fall mean that eggs have time to hatch and even allow for some fry growth before they have to leave the cover of vegetation (both from predation and flow) and enter the flow of the river. Currently we have strong year classes of Walleye from 2018, 2019, 2020, and maybe 2021. The additional vegetation that grew along the margins of the river in the low water of 2020 and 2021 may provide the Walleyes with additional spawning habitat at lower than normal water levels in 2022, but we won’t know until we sample those young of year fish this summer and fall.

Sauger like moderately high water for spawning, but tend to spawn on the edges of the main channel so high water is less important. They need the increase in flow to keep their eggs clear of sediment, but once the fry hatch since they are already in/near the current they benefit from a quick drop in flows after hatching to prevent them from being washed away etc. In 2020 we saw conditions just like this (see image: arrow indicates rapid drop in discharge at LD3 after mid-April that is associated with successful Sauger spawning) and preliminary estimates place the 2020 year class of Sauger as the 3rd highest recorded since annual sampling began in 1965. As always I am happy to answer any questions folks might have and can be reached via phone or e-mail.

Nick

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Thanks, great information there!

Thanks for that information Nick! That’s great stuff.

Thats good stuff!! Thanks