The first walleye on the Mississippi River for 2017 were caught by JD Knight and me on Wednesday, February 23rd, on the Dubuque pool! JD joined me at Bellevue for a little over an hour late afternoon on the 22nd with no fish. I took Matt Speicher’s little Lund Rebel over to the River for some very early season fishing. JD and I fished “old school” from the 14 foot boat! We put in at Dubuque early afternoon on the 23rd and started fishing up by the dam. We caught some saugers and watched other anglers jigging up the below the dam fish. We were pulling three ways–two floating Rapala F9’s tied together with a foot or so of line attached to a bell sinker–for our baits. Our best colors were firetiger and hot steel. We moved downstream and fished wing dams below the marinas where we connected with the walleye. We watched JD’s friend, Darin Shulista and his buddy, Rob, land a nice in the slot 25-incher! We checked out a few other spots with no bites and came back to the landing in the dark. We caught around 16 total fish and kept eight nice ones for JD’s fryer!! We had a glorious weather day with record highs to make our first day on the River a pleasant time, indeed! Thank you, JD, for sharing your knowledge and driving the little Lund so I could fish!! With the change in the weather today, we’ll have to wait a while for temperatures in the 70’s! Spike