Jerry’s Sports Service hung my new Yammie 90 the other day. She is beautiful. There are 3 veteran guides on pool 9. All of us run Yamaha. When you work water where all mistakes must be paid for immediately–sometimes in full–a dependable motor is critical.

Today fishin’ will be limited to maybe an hour allowing the start-and-store in the fuel tank to lay up til early March with the Yammie running at idle the whole time, ticking away at the 2 hr. break-in period.

For the past couple weeks I’ve been fishin’ out of my ‘stealth’ boat–a 14′ jon (also yammie powered). Put a couple 27+ walleyes in the boat in this time frame, maybe a dozen non-slot fish…and a pile of shorts and saugers.

Water temp has actually warmed over the past week, up to 37.5 yesterday. Fish have been holding in 21-24 fow. Pulling 3-ways with 5″ sassy shads @1.2-1.4 mph has produced most of the bigger fish, although a couple came on Northland perch pattern Buckshot rattle spoons, kelly green hair jigs and cotton candy Pulse-Rs on B-Fish-N tackle pyrokeet jigheads.

There is an absolute PILE of fish in the wintering holes where I’ve been chasing ’em lately. Many of which are probably sheep. Have thought about taking a screen shot, but a fish usually shows up and the urge passes.

More ‘seasonal’ weather is in the forecast. As of right now the river mainstem and running sloughs are pretty much open. Tundra swans are still in the area. When they leave both the other boats will be maringally winterized ( the baby boat has a 2.5 Yammie).

We usually have about a week of ‘warm’ weather in late Jan. when access to tailwaters is possible. At this time I won’t fish deeper than 30 fow–even though saugers typically hold twice that deep. Realeasing small saugers from this deep in cold water just ruptures their air bladders and kills ’em

Hate to see the gov’t step in and MANDATE a closed season in the tailwaters when you catch a fish you truly hold the future of the fishery in your hands. If this fish was ripped out of 60 fow you just killed the future.

This will probably be the last blog til hardwater time. I’m thinkin’ maybe about the 15th–just 10 fishing days before Christmas.