4-6-2012 Fri

4-6-2012 Fri
9:00 AM – 7:00 PM
Weather: calm, clear, 53 ˚, 30.28 falling (12:53PM)
Water: 5.18’ falling, 52 ˚, 25 kcfs, clear to turbid
Location: Mississippi River, pool 8
Caught: 13 LMB 10 & 18” / 14 Pike 14 - 26”, 2 dog fish
Partners: Myself and Ben

Comments

It was Friday and we had the day off on account of it being a holiday for our company. I have wanted to hit some of my old boyhood early spring fishing spots down by Goose Island and Stoddard for several years now and today was the day. We started out around the Goose Island area and that is where we did the best.
We did catch fish pretty much everywhere, but we never did have any amount of fish in any specific area, except we did find quite a few small pike around the Target Lake area. We fished long and hard today and we had some beautiful fishing weather. Notice I did say fishing weather, not catching weather. Bluebird weather with no wind is not exactly what I would consider ideal catching conditions. It is almost hilarious, I do not like fishing in the wind but I do know from past experiences I do catch more fish when we do have some wind.
The hot bait today was again spinner baits, with a swim bait taking some pike at the end of the day. Ben is a big chatter bait fan, but he had limited success with them today. I tried a senko a few different times, but I do not think the fish were stacked up enough to slow down and fish one effectively.
We did take a little break and had a darn good burger at the Shell Horn in Brownsville.

Observations:

The water temperature had been dropping on account of the days and nights being cooler than they have been in the past couple of weeks. The water level down by Goose Island is extremely low, there is much exposed shoreline and stumps.