I made it out with the company of my family, and was soon joined by Blacksportsman trailering his kids along for an afternoon/evening on the river.
Arriving at the river, I got the usual duties of unloading the van and firng up the portable propane grill to cook up a few hot dogs and enjoy the cooler weather that finaly came. Tyler’s rod was already properly set up so I stuck a nice chunk of partially frozen creek chub on the hook. I no sooner walked 10 feet to the grill and lit the grill… turned back around and his rod was bent over in the holder! Fish on!
The fishing stayed at bay with only a few more nibbles for about 15 minutes to cook the hot dogs. Soon after, the lull was over, and we had rods gettng hit, and bending over on the average of 1 minute or less from the time the bait hit the water. It was imposible to keep count of the number of fish being landed.. even while only connecting with 25% of the bites. From 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm we landed more than 20 channel cats, and ran out of bait. A bait run quickly happened, and at least another dozen fish were caught before sunset. Once sunset happened, only 2 fish were caught over an hour period. Marcus, Blacksportsman’s son was holding his own going against the flow using corn. He managed a few nice carp, a couple smallmouth, some sunfish, and a decent channel cat.
The Mississippi River is WAY DOWN from it being lowered for the 35W episode. The fish are biting during the daylight hours. Frozen Chubs and suckers.. it really didnt mke much difference, but the chubs seemed to have a better hookup percentage. A large area of pool 1 is still entirely closed off to the public which makes finding fishing areas impossible near the accident scene… please stay clear of the area due to tons of vehicles for the recovery effort. We stopped in at Mill Ruins park yesterday and scouted out the area and countless sheriffs vehicles, semi’s, red cross vehicles, news vehicles, etc were all keeping very busy on the bridge, and had the park pretty much over-run. Its a good time to head downstream and see what other shore/boat fishing opportunities wait on pool 2 or beyond.
Sorry that I dont have any pictures to post… but it was a heck of an afternoon on the river!
Doesn’t get any better than that. Family, fishin, and fun all together. 
Glad to see the familys doing fine. 