Big river docks

I was on some docks fishing the Mississippi this morning. I had rain and wind to contend with , the wind being the biggest headache. In spite of the weather, the fish seemed hungry. Today was a color day....if the color wasn't bluegill/chartreuse tail, the fish didn't hit. I went thru about 8 color changes before I hit on the good one. Effective plastic sizes ranged anywhere from 1" to 2-1/4". The water was still a balmy 54+ degrees. A major front is moving thru the area today and began yesterday but the fish still cooperated nicely. Nothing huge made the pail but I did keep 4 crappies and a nice sunfish of about 9" for dinner tonight. Lots of so-so crappies were on the chew. The 4 I kept were in the 11" range but a couple much larger blacks came un-pinned at the water-line before I could slip the net under them. The weather made the time there a challenge but in the end I was well rewarded.

Both on the river and in our local lakes we are seeing the fall pattern start to take off. It is still a little warm for the daytime, but for us at and just after dark have been very productive.

My fishing partner just had an evening that included muskie, pike, and walleye all on the bigger plastics and crappies on the smaller ones, all in the same spot. The highlight of the night was a 23" walleye. That was on a relatively shallow pool, dead until the sun went down and then it came to life big time. We had a similar experience with crappies and walleyes on the river last week, but nothing like my partner had for size although a number of crappies last week went 11-12", not bad for deep in the Metro.

The lake [Pepin] is still at or above 55 degrees in most areas. Be nice to see it drop below 45 and get things moving a bit better.

One of the signs we watch for every autumn is when the hen pike start to show up, moving up out of the depths to feed shallow. Muskies tend to be around there all summer but move in more intensely then also, although this year the reports on muskies I have heard say it has been a very poor year for the muskie hunters on the lakes we normally fish. I can believe that since we saw more small and medium pike last summer than in previous years when the full sized muskies were more common. Grandma largemouths show up more regularly then too.

We are seeing all of this although at and after dark. Of course these are metro lakes, off the Big River and much smaller than Pepin. I would expect the fall patterns on them to be a bit advanced and touchier to daily weather changes than in the River, and acre for acre under significantly more fishing pressure.

The big plastics are working for us now. We have also been finding that the fish are fussy about color too, at least so far, even after dark.

The docks were cooking this morning. It started off with smaller fish wanting smaller baits. The larger fish seemed to have gone on sabbatical until about 7:30 am. Then it was game on. I easily had a 100 fish morning. Crappies ran to 13", sunfish ran up to 10" and a couple rogue walleyes came in at about 17 inches. I kept enough fish out of the middle of the size spread for a nice meal tonight, the others are swimming yet.