Frost Bite River Walleyes. 12-06-09.

Walleye Express · December 6, 2009

Started the day out in weird fashion. Of course whenever I fish with brother Dave it tends to be that way. I tell him we will wait till 11:30am to launch and let the temp get up a little more then the 28 degrees that is was at 9:00am this morning when he called. Also to bring along some salt for the ramp to lay down when we launch. He says I'll go down at about 10:30 and throw some salt then, so it has a chance to melt all the ice on the ramp. I tell him not to do that, as other boats will/might also launch or retreive before then and wash the salt off the ramp before we get down there. Well, I'll let you guess what he did. And who do you think does the "Double back flip" on the ramp? Oh ya, me. :no:

So luckily I'm not hurt but have to launch using the other side with the salt I brought along. So we get about even with the Coast Guard station while idling out the river channel and the CG comes out in their skiff at the same time and checks probably the only boat they'll see all day, us. They are nice enough but never in very much of a hurry. Daves boat passes the inpection and we're off again. Finally hit the river mouth at about 12:00PM, water temp 37. Start out on the bay and the wind which was predicted to be 6 MPH SSW is a good and steady 12 to 15mph and almost due west. We are soon in 2 to 3 footers and taking a few very cold wet ones over the side. We head for the leeward side of the island and try there for about 30 minutes and get nothing. We end up trolling in and out of the river mouth in places where I was catching some nice fish in October using lead core and #5 Shad raps. Running Zuris and Bombers 60 and 80 back at 2.3. Some nice fish in some cold conditions. :grin:

But there was a catch to our catch. Brother Dave (because he worked there) noticed on our way out the river channel the first time, that the "Intake Screen" cleaning crew at the power plant was getting ready to clean the screens that fill with shad. They take 3 dumpsters at a time of both dead and live shad out of that immediate area when they clean the screens. A lot of those dead/dying or wounded shad drift downstream with the current and make whatever walleyes in that area go nuts on the feed. We had doubles and triples right before the screen almost every time through. :grin:

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