Champlin North Smallies

Hello,
Sunday morning I put in at Champlin and went north with my 16′ deep v with a 60hp since it is about 5 minutes to the Champlin landing for me. I haven’t been up there before so it took me a while to get up very far. I was just watching the depthfinder and taking my time. Made it up to the second or third island, it was named on the GPS but I forgot the name. I was surprised at how fast the river was up there, so I pulled the boat onto a sand bar and started rigging a rod. At that time, guy in a big Ranger came flying by downstream. It didn’t look like a jet, so he must have known the river fairly well. I ended up with one 27″ pike and about a 4 or 5# catfish. There were carp jam packed into every eddy feeding on the surface.
Is anybody fishing the river with any success lately? I was really hoping to find a smallie or two and was kind of surprised that I didn’t hook into any. I can usually find one or two below 169, but the river is much prettier up further and a little more exciting to fish. What’s working (lures, depths, structure)? how do you handle boat control when fishing faster water? I know there are a few of you guys that fish the river pretty hard who probably have some advice for me… I was thinking about putting in at the Crow next time maybe and going upstream from there.

Although I can not give you advice on boat control because we just run a canoe, and your lucky cause I have always wanted to fish the mississippi in the area that you were describing!

We fish the Crow river a good amount. We have caught many catfish along with pike – walleye – and smallies, however they do not seem abundant. We are able to work pretty slowly upstream with just a 30 thrust trolling motor, however, the crow does get very shallow in some areas, so be careful.

If you looking for some good smallie action, i would recommend the rum river, which dumps into the mississippi in anoka, and I have seen many people with their boats out there, we usually start more north (isanti, st. francis, etc)

Thanks for the advice. If I put in at the crow, I’d probably go towards Otsego on the Miss. rather than up the crow. Is there enough water to float my boat on the Rum at St. Francis? I would like to run up the river and fish back to the landing. the boat is comparable to a Lund Pro V 1660.

Jeff, be extremely careful, there are a ton of rocks between dayton and elk river.

Anything north of the Crow with a prop boat is gonna be touch and go. It gets very shallow from there up through Monticello.