First River Bassin’ for 2004 – Locations…

Okay, while I’d love for you all to provide GPS points for your favorite spring-time locations on Pools 5a-10, I would never ask… Unless you were willing to share them…

Serioulsy, with the ice clearing its way out, temps will be in the high 30’s and current is up, levels slightly up… What types of locations do you try and identify on a river system as large as the Miss in the EARLY Spring? Smaller rivers presumably have fewer locations to migrate and move to, so the Miss offers so much variousl habitat to stage in…

I have had limited success this early, but hope to get out in the next week or so… (cannot wait!!!!)

Any thoughts out there?

I’d love to help ya out G-MAN , but since i have to fish AGAINST ya for the next 20+ weeks….I’ll leave it up to you At least til I win the Jerkin’ Lips Opener.

jerkin lips opener!!!holy uffda vertinsnickle

Reel Guy,

I don’t fish your home pools very often but I’m coming to some general conclusions where to find early smallies. I’ve caught 6 so far this spring and with some looking around with the AquaView a few pieces of the puzzle are coming together. I believe that many river smallies…don’t…make a major migration. I’m finding them close to where they were in the summer if there home is in a segment of the river where the current is spread over a wide area. As an example, there is a wing dam that I caught fish on last spring that I went back to this spring and took 4 fish. It’s in a wide area of the river and as I look it carefully I see it has 2 high spots with a trough in-between. The fish appear to hunker down in the trough and stay for the winter. Almost all of the fish I’ve seen and caught are in similar current breaks.
I would look around areas that you know that held fish last fall in the lower portions of pool 7. That stretch is similar to the areas I’m finding fish in. Don’t expect it to happen fast because it’s the needle-in-the-haystack.