I doubt it would work as well as a regular drill. Now I haven’t tried my auger on the ice with my impact I have tried to use hole hawg bits in my impact to drill holes in wood to run water lines at work, and it doesn’t work nearly as well as with my m18 drill. I would assume it’s going to be the same case with ice. My Milwaukee 18 volt drills hole plenty quick for me

1- 4.8 or 5.8 inch keitech fat swing impact swimbait in sun gill or another perch color on a weedless swimbait hook
2-3/8 oz dirty jigs no-jack swimjig in perch color with a 4.8 keitech trailer
3- river2sea s-waver 168 in light trout or perch
4- 4” phantom softail glider
5- Rapala jerkbaits, could have a top 5 with just these as I use original floaters, husky jerks, shadow raps, countdowns, and others. They all have their own time and place.
My 2 biggest this year were a 41” on the 4” phantom glider and a 44.5 on a size 13 original rap with stock hooks, pretty proud about landing that with such light wire hooks

Thanks for the replies, I put in at Max’s park place. I know first hand that there have been multiple fish over 50 caught in the river. I’m going to try to get out on the river more next year hopefully if we don’t get as much rain as this year, would be truely special to get a trophy out of the zumbro as I grew up fishing the lake. I get the feeling that with the water being over the top of the dam all year that most of the walleye left in the lake probably took the jump and ended up in the river. A friend of mine got a 28” in a pool by Hammond so I know there is trophy potential for eyes as well as skis

Thank you a lot for the quick replies. To get more specific I would be wanting to boat to use to fish the main river above and below lake pepin as well as pepin when there isn’t much pleasure boaters or lots of wind. I will still use my kayak for the backwaters as I can get around 6-7mph out of it on full blast with my trolling motor but i would like to use a bigger boat back there if possible also. My preference would be a 16, possibly 14 foot deeper V to handle waves a little better, and I would only really would be interested in a tiller as it saves a lot of room. Thanks again for the replies

I would recommend buying a medium or medium heavy spinning rod combo. Try to get a decent one from an outdoors store you should have no problem finding something from $60-80. Throw some 20lbs power pro braid on it and buy a couple leaders. I like heavy floro and titanium leaders but if you don’t want to spend that much then regular wire will work fine. Get a couple mepps spinners in size 4 and 5, either single or double bladed. You can also get some safety pin style spinnerbaits in bright colors for really inexpensive. I would also recommend getting a husky jerk or two in size 12 or 14 in a perch color for less weedy areas. A lot of lures work for pike but these 2 or 3 will cover most of your bases. Pike aren’t very hard to catch when they are hungry, keep your lure in the water and you’ll catch some.

I was fishing the zumbro today in Zumbro Falls just downstream of where cold spring brook dumps in and my brother lost a 20+ inch brown right next to shore. One of the biggest trout I’ve seen in my life. I don’t get the impression there are a lot of them in there but I’ve seen some big trout in that system.

Got my kayak out bellow the dam today and fished for about 4 hours, felt awesome to be in open water in January. Got a nice 17″ smallie right away and then nothing for about 2 hours. Once the sun started to go behind the dam I caught 3 walleye, with one being between 20-21. Also snagged about a 15lbs carp by the tail, fought it for 15 minutes before I could land it. Thought I had a nice musky on but it was still an incredibly fun fight. Whole pool was open and the water visibility was around 2 feet. All the fish I caught were dragging a 1/8th ounce jig and a fathead.

Double posted

I see on their facebook page they are still having events this winter so hopefully they will let me buy a pass. With the warm weather and the rain im hoping that there is a good amount of open water around the main basin of the pool. All the spots on the zumbro and root I have checked out have been almost completely open still.

I dedicated 3 or 4 trips here this fall to purely muskie fishing, and had multiple follows each outing. Never hooked into any but did get some good mid 30 inch pike on a 9 inch weighted suick. I have personally seen many upper 40 inch fish caught this fall, and a friend of mine witnessed a 53 incher caught on a topwater walking bait late this summer. Im going to spend a lot of time next muskie season targeting them on this river. Thanks for the input.