I was up fishing the Mississippi River near Monticello today and the first thing I noticed was how cold the water was near the discharge; normally it is ~65F but today it was bone chilling cold around 35F on my thermometer.
I am not sure exactly what happened but the stream side chatter was that there was an “immediate plant shutdown” early Saturday morning shutting off the warm water discharge causing the river temps near Monticello to plunge from 65F to 35F almost instantaneously. This sudden shock caused some fish to die; mostly catfish but also some SMB. What I saw most of were catfish in real shallow water in a lethargic/recovery mode state. There were several +10lb catfish I could just lift up with my hand while I gently released them back into the water. I can only imagine the shock these fish felt with the water temps cooling 30F at once.
I also noticed dead fish laying along the bank as there was a guy netting them up and discarding dead fish on the bank. He didn’t have a rod with him and I thought maybe we worked for the Excel power company.
Needless to say the fishing was poor and nobody I talked to today caught a fish…Might be a few weeks for the river to stabilize even after the warm water discharge starts up again.
