Pool 2 – Saturday.

Nice day to be out for sure! Spent the day in Dinosaur’s boat jigging the channel up at the airport. Pretty steady bite on a jig/minnow presentation. Just keeping it simple and enjoying this 48 degree weather! Many fish in the 13-17 inch range with a handfull in the 19-21 inch range. Nice mix of walleye and sauger. Got lucky today and bumped into this nice one mid morning. She put up a pretty good tussle on my light tackle! (See attachment above)

I like this picture because I can see the office building I work at in the background. Who says you need to go to Up North. Up North is right here! That’s what I tell the guys I work with as I point out the window. LOL Thanks Dino for taking the shot.

Jon J.

Nice Walleye Jon, way to put them in the boat, hope everyone today got out fishing. me I’m workin, but I went yesterday. Jack.

Very nice fish Jon… and I love the background scenery!

cool shot… and nice fish!!……
what you get her on?

Nice fish buddy!
Look at the belly on her. I cannot believe the tummies on these girls this fall.
Nice looking fish.
Pool 2 is alive and well!

After such a nice weekend I finally got out on the river sunday afternoon. Headed up to the airport and got in line with the other boats up there. Only about 10 boats out there today. Decided to stick to the plastics today again. Ended up fishing a purple tube most of the afternoon. Ended up bringing somewhere around 25 eyes and saugers to the boat with that. Mostly eyes. most fish in the 15″ range. I did manage to find one 19″ sauger and one 21″ eye. The minnows looked like they taking a good share of fish also today. The sonars seemed to be working also. It was interisting to see one boat that was dragging there jigs across the main channel and picking up a few fish. Other than these guys I saw very few fish being caught in the main channel. Got me thinking about maybe doing some trolling threw there. Most fish seem to be caught on the edge of the channel today.
I hope all the weather predictions for monday are wrong. I was hoping to head out once again.

Your idea of trolling is something that did not get any mention yet. Jon and I made a few upstream passes on Saturday with 3-ways and cranks. We did pick up decent sized sauger this way. We had a pair of counters set up to log walleye and sauger numbers. At one time the ratio was 3 to 1 walleye and after the trolling passes the sauger caught up and we were at 2 to 1. Small Raps and Thundersticks worked for us. On Sunday we did not catch a fish with 3-ways during the passes we made. Jigs were doing OK.

this is such a difference from what we used to get a few years ago where it was 4-1 saugers over ‘eyes….. and the numbers of fish were remarable… tons of 18″ fish….. but I guess that was the old days…. long gone…… last few years you can still get nice fish… but its a much tougher job working for them and the total numbers are down….. because of the sauger decline I guess…. I used to average 30 over 15″ fish per 4 hour trip….. 4-1 Saugers… so lets see…. at 2-1 walleyes with walleyes assumed to be the same population… thats… thats….. thats…… 6 walleyes and 3 saugers per trip… or a total of 9 fish…… hmmmm sounds like the walleye population must be up… trying to fill in the gap in the sauger population…..
I will have to try my old holes… for me seldom was the airport the best bet…. but the other spots I had that were good were much more narrowly focused and did not take a lot of pressure to burn off…… sometimes just 2-3 passes and they were done…. but you might get 5 nice fish a (vertical jigging) pass…..

I think that you will see similar catches right now to what you have experienced in the past.

Last winter at the airport you would catch 6-10 18″+ sauger and TONS of 8″ eyes. Well, now these small eyes are larger and very aggressive. Has anyone caught a fish from this years hatch yet? I havent. If you throw out the hatch from 2001, it would probably still be 3-4 sauger to 1 walleye. Dino? Jon? Deezee? Are you guys seeing similar results?

I bet that if you get away from the crowds and hit some spots that have worked in the past you will be rewarded. Pool 2 is MUCH better now than it was 2-3 year ago for size and numbers.

On Saturday , Jon did have a walleye not much longer than the T-stick jr. that he was trolling with. We were seeing plenty of fish in the 14″ to 17″ range. Were these from 2001 or 2000?
On Friday am before the fog lifted , I was working the Red Rock area with nothing to show for it. Jon and I tried it last Tuesday with nothing also. I did not spend any time with the wing dams other than the airport. We did see a boat or 2 at the warm water discharge but they did not stay long.

so Dino…. is the Red Rock area near that little island, right at the first bend upriver of the 494 bridge…. where that slough branches off? that used to be a popular spot… but I never fished it much either….. I had other spots down river from there…… and down below the 494 bridge….

This fall on the wingdams has proven many fish in the 12-15inch range, far more than I have seen over the years. I would say that these might be a mix of 2000/2001 fish. The numbers are high for this size of fish. I also have noticed a fair increase of numbers in the 24-27 inch range this year that were somewhat low numbers of 22-25 inch fish over the last couple years.I have noticed the increase of baitfish in the river this year over the years past as well. Long story short….I think Pool 2 is as good as I have seen it for awhile. This year was a great year for both numbers and size. Some of the non-traditional spots are producing fish right now as well as the community holes like the airport and hole above and below 494 bridge. I think good things are coming forth down here for the future. I think we will see more big fish over the next couple years than we ever have on a more consistant basis as well. So far, I would have to agree as the numbers of walleyes are out numbering the sauger as of right now.
Are the numbers down on the sauger? My numbers appear to be right on track this fall compared to years past.

Yes , the Red Rock daymark is at the south junction of the “Y”. We have caught fish there and also further up at the Y. Sometimes the sauger are in the main channel from the daymark to the bridge , but not yet this year. Last Tuesday we tried a couple of spots south of the bridge. One dropped off to almost 40′ but we pulled nothing out from there.

Hi guys, This was a great fishing discussion for Pool 2. It’s great to hear that so many techniques are working well and that a few of the big girls are being caught. Dan Dankers joined me Sunday afternoon for the airport bite where we caught a good number of walleye with a few saugers mixed in using jig/minnow, jig/super doo, and jig and purple 5″ pulse worm. After a while we headed to the backwaters for the ice bite not knowing what happened to DeeZee’s gear. The bite in the backwaters was slow but we caught a few to make it fun. I guess the highlight was that our gear was still there when we left.

Im going to have to get out there someday soon….. its been a couple of years since I hit 2 hard….. (or is that too hard?)
anyway…. thanks to this board Ive picked up a lot of new techniques… in the old days I was stuck on 3″ twister/minnow most of the time…. and then a buck tail with minnow…. its interesting to hear someone using sonars out there… Im the only one I ever saw using those on pool 2… and I busted some very large saugs on em…… particularly in the afternoons after the fish had been “jigged” to death….. then Id toss a sonar at em and it would bring in a few fish….
my best time to fish the pool was nearly always from sunup till 11pm… then it would slow down from 11-1…. and pick up agin till 3….. I always was fishing a channel bite (or edge of channel)……. and 30 (15″+) fish per person was a very average day… with many days in the 40-50 fish range… and even 60 (and sometimes more)…. in a 4-5 hour day…. I had some days when my arm hurt so bad from all the fish I caught that I couldnt fish again for a week…… (fishing elbow I guess…..)
so the doos work there…. big suprise!…. and no doubt ring worms “doo” too!!…
what colors do you guys have success with on 2? my best by far was blue or blue/white…… in fact that was so good and consistant that I very seldom had to switch…..

I stuck to the purple on sunday, but have caught plenty of fish on white and a firecracker. Tried the purple and white tail ringworm but only had short bites on it. The tubes I have been fishing are 3″ and unscented. Picked them up on short notice. I would think a superdoo might produce better. Exspecialy if you where an expert at using one.
I was thinking of trying to sell my bucket of minnows online. I have used four out of the bunch in the last 2 trips. They keep real good this time of year and are used to traveling. It sure is nice to not have to mess with them.