“I think we can get some good ones today!” said my fishing partner for the day, JD Knight, over breakfast at Richman’s café early Saturday morning in Bellevue, Iowa. We put JD’s Tracker in the water and made a pass near the pack up by the Lock and Dam–no bites. We moved downriver and fished the wing dam in front of the DNR landing on the Iowa side and picked up our first fish, a very colorful sauger! After a couple more passes with our double rap rigs and no bites, we headed to the backwater slough looking for crappies–again, no takers! We ended up stopping where the slough dropped into the River and joined a couple other boats where the anglers were jigging. We ran our double raps and started catching fish in 18-22 feet moving from the sand into some vegetation. Our biggest was just under 20 inches with lots of smaller ones for our efforts. JD headed back to the Bellevue dock as the sun set and the temperatures started to drop–a good time to get off the water! He kept six fish to clean back home and I headed over to our campground to see how my pals had done during the day and found their bite started around 3pm and they ended up with six fish to clean. The campground pals are mostly from Illinois and I found they were giving up on the fishing to start deer hunting back home. Homeward bound, I reflected on the really nice 50 degree day we had in late November and the nice fish we caught! Thank you, JD, for sharing your boat and time together on the water! Until the next time…..
