Louis, the "father of waters" has been modified with dams and channel training structures (
wing dams) for navigation and flood control.
The barge boat is remarkably well-suited to negotiate the sandbars, steep ramps, rocky
wing dams and ice so thick it sometimes must be cut with a chainsaw to create a passage.
This is serious water, complete with barges and
wing dams that will swamp or destroy a small boat, so proceed with caution.
The fish also spawned over cobble substrate in side channels, and some fish used side channels and
wing dams near Lock and Dam 3.
This is especially true of the hundreds of large
wing dams that partially block the main channel and provide conveniently located behind-and-between storage compartments, in which sediment is readily stored, thus seriously slowing its downriver movement.
Determining the significance of
wing dams, riprap and sand as fishery habitat, p.
On this river, like dozens of others, the day-in-dayout game might simply mean casting to a series of natural rock points, which give way to
wing dams many river miles to the south.
Fairbairn deals with boulders, too, but equally as often he fishes
wing dams, timber-designed eddies, clambeds, and walleye wallowing-holes.
As water temperatures warm into the 40s and runoff from snowmelt reduces visibility to a foot or two, Hahn runs a classic Dubuque Rig in current seams below the tips of
wing dams and points, or in slower stretches of the main current.
"Day One we worked
wing dams on the Mississippi, primarily with #5 and #7 Rapala Glass Shad Raps [Glass Purple Shad was his hot color], and also three-way rigs with livebait," he says.
In summer, you find bluegills in a variety of patterns, near downed cover, behind
wing dams, in vegetation just inside backwaters, or out in the main channel.
"I like to fish
wing dams with a trough on the upstream side.