Guttenberg Tailwaters-Fished 3/17 - Mississippi River – Walleye - Mississippi River – Walleye

This report will have no pictures of gi-gan-tor mama walleyes or coolers full of eater saugers-because we came up pretty much empty!

However, the day was truly spectacular, with clear blue skies and bald eagles, lined up like sentinels, in nearly every 5th or 6th tree along the bank.

We decided to try the ‘Gut based on the recent good reports, alebeit a week old. Since that time, several weather fronts came through and according to some locals we met, the rollers were opened up, changing the flow from previous weeks. I had some concerns the fish might have lockjaw with all these changes, and my fears came to fruition.

We fished for about 6 hours. There was a group of 6-12 boats working the channel edge and wing dam just downstream from the float. We joined the flotilla and made many passes both vertical jigging and dragging jigs, but could only manage 1 keeper eye and a feisty redhorse. Action in the other boats was slow to non-existant. The walleye came on a 1oz purple hair jig tipped with a minnow and the redhorse came on a red and white 3/4 ounce buctail tipped with a minnow.

We motored down about 3 miles downstream to try some rip-rap along the Iowa side below the hide-away, but no luck there either. From there, we tried the sand bank above ackerman’s with precision h20 jigs and ringworms, but again, no takers.

We rounded the day out by jigging alog the lock wall and below the lock chamber along some rip-rap, but failed to get on the scoreboard.

Another boat came over and chatted with us, they had fished the whole day and had only 4 keepers to show for it. They also tossed us a hunk of some of the best deer bologna I have eaten (thanks, guys, whoever you are!) and made a sinner of this Catholic boy on a Lenten Friday! (no red meat on Fridays, during Lent)