3-22-2013 Fri.

3-22-2013 Fri. 7:00 PM – 10:30 PM
Weather:
(1853) N5, clear, 29 ˚, 30.14 steady
H2O:
639.4, 13kcfs, 32 ˚, clear
Location:
Mississippi River pool 7, Trempealeau Dam
Caught:
Scott – approximately 20 walleye/sauger 1 – 16” walleye
Me – approximately 12 walleye/sauger
Partners:
Scott

Comments:

It was my first open water fishing trip of the season and it was somewhat of a spur of the moment outing. I met up with Scott at the landing for a late start trip. The ice had been off the landing for about a week, but there were still plenty of ice chunks floating around it.
We started out fishing the tail water area very close to the restricted access area in about twenty feet of water. We did not catch much there, so we drifted and moved into areas with twenty five to thirty feet of water and started catching fish. We caught fish fairly steadily until we were shrouded in darkness, then the bite fizzled.
We continued to catch a fish here and there, but the action really dissipated in short order. We continued to fish the deep water for another hour after darkness, but we had very little luck. The last area we tried was much shallow and had lots more flow, but this is where we had pretty good action on the walleyes. The bite was in less than ten feet of water and it was steady. We fished the ten foot depth range for about an hour and then called it a night.

Observations:

The fishing was good tonight, the conditions are still winter time, but spring cannot be too far off. The main channel is open, but pretty much anything else is frozen over. Lake Onalaska is still solidly frozen and vehicles are still driving out to the airport lights area.