Today we tried the upper Mississippi River as more of a scouting mission to see how it fishes in the middle of Winter. We have fished this same section in the Summer and were familiar with area.
Since we haven’t fished the Miss. before in the dead of Winter we brought up both sucker minnows and a wide assortment of plastics (of course, in various styles, sizes, and colors).
For a scouting mission, I would say the fishing far exceeded our expectations…We caught both quantity and quality of Smallmouth. Most we in the 14″ to 16″ range with still alot in 17″ to 18″ range; and 4 or 5 over 18″. Also, caught 3 nice Walleyes, a few largemouth, and a Northern. It has been a while since I felt the tap tap of a Walleye on plastics so it was nice to feel it again.
As for bait selection, sucker minnows might have gotten top bait honors but slowly presented plastics were a very close second. Next time, I think we will scrap the live bait and just go with plastics. Caught an equal number of large fish on both plastics and sucker minnows.