A co-worker swears he has caught lots of sauger in the Island and Isabella rivers. I'm skeptical. Maybe some in the west and north parts of BW, but the east side?? Anybody with info??

I live in east central Iowa and fish in the Mississippi River a couple times every year since it's only an hour or so away from home. The "Miss" has alot of walleye and sauger in the stretch I fish, north of Dubuque, Ia. A sauger looks like a walleye, but tends to be smaller, usually 1 to 4 lbs, with a 4 lber being a really big one as far as saugers go. The other easy main difference is that sauger have big black body splotches on their bodies. Not speckles, but big black splotches like you see in many camoflage patterns. Walleyes don't have any colored splotches on their bodies and tend to have a white tip along the bottom of their tails. I've caught sauger in the bdub before up on the Basswood river and in Crooked lake. It wouldn't necessarily be suprising if they were in Isabella river, because they spread to new waters like smallies do- time and high water. Saugers LOVE the current!!!!! I've caught them usually while jigging or using a lindy rig setup. They taste much the same as walleye and make a good meal. You could also call one the fisheries guys up in Ely from the MDNR and ask if they are in either the Isabella or Island river systems, if sauger are present, they would tend to show up in a fish survey I would think. Hope this helps, Dave

I don't think that saugers are present in the Island River or any other waters in that area. They ARE found in Crooked Lake and downstream from there. I remember catching a bunch of them off of Pancake Point a few years ago.

No sauger in the Island river or Isabella lake either. There is a few sauger in Crooked lake west of Basswood.

We have also caught saugers on Agnes.

ditto on Agnes, but clearly that's on the western end.

Thanks for the input. Guess he'll have to prove it with a real fish. DNR survey reports don't show sauger in any of the lakes down that system. But the surveys are few and far between, just wanted to see if anglers had any info that might back his claim. Survey reports do turn up sauger in Crooked and Agnes.