St. Croix River – smallies and eyes

The St. Croix is rising and is now at 682.68 feet above sea level in Stillwater, MN. The water temperature is 73 degrees. The water is two feet higher and 8 to 10 degrees warmer than my river trip.
I had a great trip today with Bruce Fullerton, and his father, Russ, and his son Andrew. We targeted bass and walleye – a wonderful entertaining Croix mixed combo to pursue.

I found that even though the water was high the color was not overly stained or muddied, so wind helped on this trip. We live bait fished and did very well on bass especially in the morning.We targeted shallow water in the 10 foot range in the morning.

Legal walleye, took a bit of time to locate after a week off, but we did find some nice keeper walleye and saugers mixed in with the very strong year class of 2010-2011, there is a huge batch of 14inch fish in the river. I targeted walleye today with spinners/bait and cranks.

As mentioned I targeted walleyes with spinners but as we had more luck on cranks, cranks it was.

Pretty typical late June day, though it felt much more like July in the 90 degree heat. Actually the bass were larger than normal, we got at least 6 from 18 to 19inch plus the big one that got away…hey how often do I say that… Talked to a buddy at the landing that did well on spinners and that is good, because that means the walleyes are open to a few ways to being caught. When the bite gets tough fewer techniques work…

Also the river will likely go no wake tomorrow. Its summer time.