9.9 hp big enough for river?

I’ve fished lakes for years, but am new to the Mississippi. A stupid question: Is a Mercury 9.9 (on a 16-ft. Lund Rebel) big enough to handle the river? I’m planning to stay away from the locks and steer clear of the barges. Please advise. I’ll be fishing near Guttenberg, IA in pool 11, just south of the lock and dam. Second stupid question: Is there any easy way to figure out where the wing dams are located? Thanks.

Sure! I got started running a 9.5 HP Evinrude…. so you got an extra 0.4 HP to spare…LOL Seriously though, just launch real close to the area you want to fish and be content working a relatively small area. I just left a good fishin’ buddy of mine as we fomulated his strategy for tomorrows fishing with the advice that I’ve run myself off of more fish than I’ve ever run down…. so being extra mobile isn’t always a good thing. Be patient. Put the best, most precise presentation together you can possibly muster and don’t worry about what’s 10 miles down river.

Wingdams can be easily spotted by the ripple line they make as the water flows over the tops of the dams. No worries though. Just stay in the navigation channel, between the red and green bouys, and you’re in great shape.

Thirty five years ago I was fishing up in the dam in the winter time with a 3 HP sea king Johnson, & then a 4, & then a 6 H.P. After they built those two wingdams in Ackermans, I would say a 6 is about as low as you want to go with your boat to get back up stream in ackermans.
Most of the red & Black channel markers have got wing dams on them. Just about all entrances to a backwater or slough have submerged closing dams, some being deep enough to run across, & some not. A friend of mine a couple of days ago fished his way down to below Cassville & found the best fishing to be with in two miles of the dam {John}

Here is a website to look at for your area wingdams. http://www.mvr.usace.army.mil/navdata/navchart.htm eyenutz

My first boat that I actually owned was an old 14ft. boat that if you looked at each side in the sun you could read two different resort names on it that had been peeled off the boat at one time. The motor on it was a Johnson 6 hp. We use to fish the river [Lake Pepin] in it plus we fished Lake Zumbro [wide deeper spot on the Zumbro River every Wed. night for a fishing fix between weekends. On the 3 big summer holiday weekends we made the annual boat ride trip in it from Lake City to Red Wing driving fairly close to shore [ no wing dams in that stetch] with me and my wife at the time [my boat is now my wife, lol, divorced, ] and our 4 kids. I was fishing a tournament once with a buddy and when the bite got slow we talked about wether to stick it out where we were or travel a ways to see if we could find some active fish out into the lake. I made the remark about if I had a bigger boat we could hit a few other places quicker to find out [had a 16 ft. with a 40hp then]. We decided to stay and ended up taking 1st. place. M partner told me afterwards that if I had that bigger boat we wouldn’t of caught the fish we did as I would of up and left that spot. Yesterday I found myself in the same place again, fishing the same spot in a tournament and my partner and I questioned if we should stay put where we knew there was fish, just turned off for us for awhile, or should we run to some other places. This time I had a bigger boat, 16 1/2 ft. with a 90 hp and with the new Lund IPS hull will run in the mid 40’s. Well we decided to stay put and it paid off as we took 2nd. in a small club tournament. BUT, I said all that to make this point-do you know what motor we used to fish with all day? It was my 6HP. Johnson kicker motor that we trolled with to catch our fish. Both my son Nate and my son-in-law Chad use a 8hp. motor to troll with in their 17 ft. boats. Will a 9.9 hp. motor work on the river to catch fish? YOU BET!!!. You just have to watch out for big waves and stay in closer safer areas but it should be a great fishing motor, especially in a river wtere you find both deep and shollow water and will want to troll down slow at times. Catch a few for me and give us a report on how you like the motor/boat and do fishing. Thanks, Bill

If you’re fishing 11 with a smallish motor, I would put in at Guttenburg – there’s a 3-lane ramp that’s really well-kept right below the lock about a mile. There’s another one on the Iowa side right across from Cassville (about 6-7 miles downriver). The river narrows there where the Cassville Slough and the main channel come back together, and the current is pretty strong through there. Not much room to steer clear of barges in that stretch either.

Also, if you go through Ackerman’s cut, don’t make the same mistake as me and throttle back. It only looks like it’s 6 inches deep; it’s really 7 feet. Stay on the gas and you won’t have to endure the brief carousel ride I took through there.

Should you venture down ackerman’s cut for the first time I would suggest taking it easy. When Mcgreger says 9 ft. then you’ve got about 7 ft. of water in the center of the wingdam. Both sides of the wingdams taper from one ft. to 7 ft. Also when going down stream and past the second wing dam about 60 yds to the right are two big deadheads I saw a guy lose his motor off one of them. {John}

Where exactly is Ackerman’s cut?

It’s almost directly across from the landing at Guttenburg. It goes from the main channel over to Cassville slough, and the slough has enough running water to hold fish, but not enough width to hold power-boats. It’s a great escape during the summer.

I would defer all knowledge of Ackerman’s to G&S – I only make it up there a few times a year at best. My sure-fire method of getting through the back-channels unscathed is to follow a bigger boat the first time through, whereas he knows what he’s doing.

One other tip: Get there early. If you get there before 7:30 or so, you can dump right in and get across the main channel without getting run-down or tossed. The ride back across in the afternoon is always more interesting, with lots of 20’+ Caravelles, Crownlines, and other frat-boy boats hauling skiiers, tubers, parasailers, and anything else that can be hooked to the transom and hauled on the river.

If your wait getting out is going to be a long one, there’s a wingdam right below the landing where I’ve picked up a couple of fish. Beats idling in the truck, anyway.