1-26-13 Sat

1-26-2013 Sat 8:30 AM – 8:00 PM
Weather:
(0830), calm, clear, 7 ˚, mostly cloudy, 30.38 falling
(1643), calm, overcast, 23 ˚, 30.29 falling
Water:
639.3 steady, 10.3 kcfs, clear
Location:
Pool 6, north of Winona and Pool 7, Trempealeau dam
Caught:
3 crappies, approx. four bluegills, 2 pike, 1 LMB, 2 walleyes
Partners:
Scott
Comments

It was an all-day fishing trip and it was brutal. When I say brutal I mean it was very slow, the bite never really happened. The two best fish came right away in the morning on tip ups and they were a 16 inch bass and about a 26 inch pike. The pan fish nor the pike or bass never became active; in fact they were even scarce on the locator.
We fished our pan fish and pike spot till around 2pm then we packed the bags and headed to the dam for some first time through the ice walleye fishing for Scott. We were on the ice and headed to the short wall around three. I was quite surprised that no one else was yet there, and that made me a little nervous on the ice conditions. Perhaps the ice had deteriorated and the area was no longer accessible?
I picked and poked my way up to the short wall with Scott a safe distance behind, but close enough so he could follow my steps. It is a little nerve racking with the clear ice when you can see ice bubbles collecting and dancing just a few inches below your feet. If you go through and under here, you will probably not be seen again till spring.
The walleye bite was very slow. Scott the newbie bested me with a count of four to my measly two. All the fish were short, but Scott had one that was just shy of the fifteen inch size limit. There were about twelve other fishermen in close proximity to us and from what I gathered from the other guys only two fish were big enough to keep.

Observations:

We were the first up to the short wall, but by four o’clock another dozen or so anglers had joined us. The bite here is definitely a sun down to after dark bite. We did not have any bites and marked very few fish until the Minnesota bluffs started to dim the light of the sun.