I'll be heading out on the St. Croix from Lion's Park Tomorrow with a couple folks and was wondering if anyone fishes this area of the river much. What fish populate this part of the Croix most and what presentations do they prefer. I'd be most interested in walleyes, smallies, pike, and muskies. Has anyone been having much luck in this area? We will be hitting it late afternoon to early evening.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

The smallies should be starting to stack up down there in the deeper water, the crappies can be had near the shorelines along the Mn. side llok for them suspended and along the banks where there is any brush or boulder rubble. There are some cats in the area and there are also walleyes to be had. I'd target the 15' range and work out from there. Are you launching on the Wisc side or the Mn side? Just north of the landing on the Mn side there usually is schools of suspended crappies 15' down over 22-30' of water. Motoring upriver be careful as there are some shallow rocky areas that will be holding smallies. You can also fish the lilypads and docks up that way for bluegills, smallmouth,largemouth and the occassional pike. I primarily jig with minnows or run threeways or work plastics and cranks along the pads and dock areas but jigs work well too. Towards evening the smallie will relate to the shoreline in the shallow areas and will pop topwaters with vigor. As always with river fishing look for the current breaks, seams and eddies. If you go the deep water route then crank up your electronics and work the deeper holes slowly. Haven't caught any skis up there but doesn't mean they aren't in there. Good luck, it is really pretty up that way.
Tunrevir~

We were up there probably a month ago, caught some decent smallies along the rocks, and a mess of pike out of the weedy patches along the shoreline. Seemed like they couldn't resist the spinnerbait. I also had one muskie follow to the boat, turned his nose up at me nonchalantly swam off. Like I said, that was a month ago though, so you may have to go deeper for the smallies...We were fishing very early a.m. as well.

Dang, I had to work late so didn't make it out with the guys, but I heard the pike bite was OK and a few bass and one small walleye were boated. Maybe I'll hit Lion's Park area this weekend and give it a try.

I know what you mean, many a good day on the water has been spoiled by that four letter word!
Tunrevir~