Mississippi River Pool 5 Fishing Report, 3/23-24

March is one of my favorite times to visit Alma and Pool 5. The boat traffic is very manageable, and the fish tend to be quite agreeable. The stars and planets aligned this week to get me on the water for 5 of the past 7 days, with 2 of those days spent on Pool 5. Each day saw decent numbers of fish come to the net, all caught on BFT ringworms, and all from less than 15 feet of water.

On Thursday I was joined by my father-in-law Tim for a day of chasing walleyes on shallow sand flats between the wingdams that line the main channel. The skies were cloudy and there was horizontal snow in the air, and we were able to put around 10 legal eyes in the boat, including the 20" fish shown in the first picture. Our technique was to drag ringies on 3/32 plain precision heads in 10-15 fow, near the edges of the flats. We caught fish on a wide variety of ringworm patterns, as long as they were chartreuse pepper! Every single one of our fish came between 2 particular wingies, and while we combed sand for about 1.5 river miles, we only found biters in one 100 yard stretch. Here’s another 18" eater that got a nosebleed on the way to the net.

On Friday my guest was my pooch that is featured in my avatar. She loves the boat, the eagles, and the fresh air. The program on Friday was similar to Thursday’s, except this day found biters scattered all up and down the channel. No two fish came from one flat today; rather, I had to cover water to stay on active fish. This is where I think dragging plastics excels: it is the cold-water version of pulling cranks in the summer to find biters. On friday I took fish on chart/pepper, firecracker/chart tail, and cotton candy ringies, with firecracker/chart tail being the big winner. No real monsters today, but I did stumble on this 18" smallie about 30 minutes after I was visited by Capt. John Stears (Riverfan Bass Tours)…John must have brought the bass mojo with him, because I caught 3 smallies in the 90 minutes after his second visit. By the end of the day I had around a dozen legal eyes, 3 smallies, a couple of saugers, and my first open water snot rocket of 2006 .

The sauger patrol is out in full force. I saw lots of boats working the channel down below the dam, and they were putting the hurt on saugers using leadheads, minnows, and stinger hooks. Not too many people working close to the dam, as the flow is really rocking up there. The Alma fishing float opened for the season on Friday, and the tows and barges are active on Pool 5…these are all sure signs of spring.