Des Moines River on 1st St

Yesterday I was standing a stones throw away from the Des Moines River on 1st street.

Anyone know how close I was to the summer flat fishing? (In case I have to go back…for work. )

What town were you in BK.

Des Moines.

I coulda swore I smelled secret 7 coming from the west… everyone said I was crazy.

North of town is where the dam is located been many years. There used to be some mighty big cats below that dam. For bait we would use 2-4lb suckers or the biggest sunny we could find. I have seen 80lb mono spooled and snapped below that dam.

That sounds like a Mossy Dan bite!

Thanks Tom.

The Des Moines is known for its catfish Brian. The whitebass sometimes run so hard that you could almost walk the river on thier backs. Yes theres huge flatheads on the Des Moines and If a guy camped and seriously fished the log jams anywhere in that area I’m sure he’d loose some fish.

For the guys that fish walleyes, the DNR years ago issued 2 dozen tickets for over posession of walleyes, in just one weekend, those are just the guys they caught at that dam Brian… The Des Moines is a heck of a fishery, and so’s the Cedar here where I live, lots of 30 lb’ers.

Ah, I thought you were on the Des Moines for some reason. Good to know. Next time down I’ll be taking the rods and holders along with a very large cooler.

…and a very large fillet knife.

umm…the cooler was for the beer.

Give me the heads up before you go.Got family that fishes and lives on the river.

Your welcome here anytime Brian but we have to take my boat because I don’t want to get us into a spot where we would scratch yours, but beings were both catfishermen I know it probably doesn’t matter much anyway.

Heres a trick I use fishing for flatheads. Lets say you look over a logjam and the best place to put a big bluegill is 3′ off the bank but your boat won’t fit in there where you can fish that few square feet with the boat there. I know a alot of logjams have limbs that are lets say 20′ off the bank. So heres what I do If I need to put that bluegill on that 3′ out from the bank spot and in that honey hole. I push in a 8′ too 10′ dittypole right where I want the bluegill to be and just a couple inches under the water. I then tie a clothspin on the end of a string and tie that onto the end of the dittypole. I put my fishing pole line in the clothespin so the bluegill is just under the water and so it makes alot of underwater and surface noise. I then push or motor out to a limb and tie the boat up to that and then just sit and wait.

Its a good way to fish both very nice channels during prespawn in the depths at which channels spawn and its also a good way to fish logjams for flatheads. Youd use smaller bluegills for the channels and big bluegills for the flatheads.

Imiagine haveing two rods apiece, 4 rods sticking out of the boat and all have bluegills dangeling on the surface of the water hanging from ditty poles, making all kinds of noise, think the fish would hear that and take the bluegills, I know they do.

Brian you wouldn’t believe the channel bite here when the water depth is what its suppose to be. When its close to a normal water depth and not drought conditions like last year, but we still caught a few fish, probably 50 or 60 in a few weeks instead of in a weekends timeframe like during a normal pool level. We had to fish along the edges of the river last year because thier normal spawning grounds were as dry as a bone in the desert. When its a good bite you can have 5 dittypoles a piece, thats 10. Plus use two fishing poles on the end of a willow poles stuck in the bank, with a bluegill dangeling from them, think we’ed catch any fish? Thats when its work just catching your bait. And when the bites hot and heavy your running your dittypoles once every hour or two and taking fish off. You’d fish flatheads during the night or you could fish flatheads and fish channels at the same time during the day. It really doesn’t matter what time of day it is when the channels are at prespawn because they hit just about anything that moves and I mean litterly. I wouldn’t want to be a mouse crossing an area where the channels are spawning when the females are putting blood on thier eggs and the males are milting everywhere. If you want to come and fish I’ll show you that dehooker I was talking about and you can take a couple home with you. Lets hope for a normal pool this year during April when they begin to bite, all of May and into early June when they finish spawning. (But all under the condition that I get one of those pink BrianK’s World T-Shirts.)