Pool 9 finally came down out of ‘action stage’ with the New Albin boat ramp opening up on Aug.2. Fishing for almost all species has been about as good as it gets ever since the last week of July and should be stupid easy for the forseeable future.

The longest I’ve been able to stay off the River since the end of July is about 36 hrs. don’t like being out there from about noon Friday til 3 pm Sunday unless its after panfish or channel cat which allow you to get away from high speed humanity.

haven’t been fishin’ for nearly 8 hrs as this blog gets written shortly before 2 a.m. because of cleaning and eating walleyes and sleep.

No time to get philosophical in this blog. A couple more hours sack time would be nice before putting the Lund in the water again–so here goes;

ctching quite a few legal eyes throwing that new Bill Lewis MR-6 in chart. blaze, blue chart and my new fave of faves–threadfin shad. Fish are heavy on the rocks right now, changing location more by time of day than river level. They are always following the food. Spending lots of time from middle to end of wingdams and humps on closing dams. Catching 2 nice ones for supper last nite took exactly 10 casts and 10 minutes. Weeds aren’t much of a problem yet. Time of day=shade. Often a factor.

SMB are also stupid easy on rocks, particularly at sharp current breaks. Pop-Rs in calm wind then there is shade, oxbow Traps, wacky-rigged Chompers salty sinkers or flukes otherwise.

Tremendous frog bite going on for LMB. Weeds are at max growth in the backwaters.Frogs are the best way to get at ’em.

Crappies have pretty much moved away from the deep weed edge bite and are already sneaking toward the wood. Small flukes are offering some surprising results on slabbers when probing wood looking for other stuff. northland Tackle makes a new one which is smaller than Zoomor Yum–and deadly.

Pike are pretty much suicidal back in submergent weeds where you can work a buzzbait now. Pulsing the retrieve rather than a steady retrieve triggers a lot more fish.

Bluegills have been hot flipping a Bimbo Skunk with a tiny piece of redworm. Most I’ve been catching lately have moved out of the sandgrass and are now tight to wood. Perch are congregated in elodea (coontail) in 2-7 f.o.w Catching them mostly by dipping the perchanator between the tails until active fish are located or jigging a little Buckshot spoon. both baits tipped with a tiny piece of redworm or Gulp maggot.

Channel cat have been most active in running sloughs with a hard bottom, fishing above driftpiles in 5-12 fow with sonny’s dipbait, tweaked with a handful of Shad flies.

There are 2 ‘secret sauces’ I use almost every day: Liquid Willowcat on plastics and 1/2 crawler and 1/8 oz jig for ‘eyes and SMB…and 15 drops of CBD oil on the tongue every morning. Was supposed to have total shoulder replacement. Too busy fishin’. Steroid shot in the shoulder only helped for about 6 wks. Started with the CBD back in March. Now making 500 casts a day without pain. Worth a shot, guys. Nap time again. Back to the grind at first light.

BTW: use EXTREME caution when navigating beyond the channel. River level has dropped like a stone over the past 2 wks. and there are nasty flats, sandbars and growler wood just under the surface in spots they haven’t been before–at least not this year.