Cedar River 9-14-02

The fall bite may be upon us. Last Saturday on the Cedar River provided some fantastic smallmouth bass fishing. I was able to boat 32 bass in the 13-19.5 inch range…lost another 19-20 inch fish right at the boat, and had 6 or 7 pike thrown into the mix as well. The hot bait for numbers was a #5 jointed shad rap in firecraw color, although all my fish over 16 inches came on a bitsy bug with pork trailer. The slow falling action and large profile of this bait is just something that the bruiser bronze-backs can’t resist. The smaller fish seemed to be scattered along limestone bank, but all the larger fish were holding tight to wood. The bitsy bug with a hook guard proved to be an excellent bait for pitching in around the trees and not getting snagged up. I tried to post some pics, but couldn’t get any to go through. If I get it figured out I’ll get some pictures up on the board.

Sure is fun. Anybody that fishes the Cedar and is not doing it now is missing the boat, literally!

Keith, where were you fishing on the Cedar? Can’t wait to see those pics. Send me a PM if you aren’t willing to give the location out. I realize that these small rivers have limited opportunities and respect that. Thanks……Bigdog

Fish any rocks and rock bars that have at least 2 foot water for the bass. We been getting the walleyes in a little more depth say 4 to 6 but you never know. Anywhere there is rocks with breaks in depth or in current flow such as big rocks out in water or points that stick out are good for bass. The walleye seem to hang out on the depth breaks and where the rocks meet the sand. Good luck

BFD, Thanks for the post. Are you using crankbaits, jigs, or what ever to catch those fish, especially walleyes, on the breaks where rock meets river bottom?

Please excuse me, but where is the Cedar River?

Bigdog10,
The most I’ll give you on location is north of Cedar Falls. Sorry but like you say…opprotunities are limited on these smaller rivers….plus its more enjoyable & rewarding if you can find these areas on your own. But the patterns should hold true in similar situations. The key depths for me have been 1-3 feet of water for smallmouth. For the most part the smallies are shallow right now and really feeding hard on crawdads. My best producing colors and baits, as of late, have been crawdad imitators. I even caught a fish yesterday that still had a LIVE crawdad in it’s mouth. He must have just pick up meal as my crankbait was coming by and thought he needed another one.

As for the pictures…..I guess the photos my camera takes are too nice. After resizing and croping I could only get the file size down to 2 million bytes and I can’t attach anything over 100,000 bytes…..but I am going to keep trying to find away to produce a smaller file size. Any suggestions?

I would like to also remind everyone to practice catch and release on these small rivers. 90% of the fish hold in 10% of the avilable water and on smaller rivers it doesn’t take long to fish these areas out.
Good Luck
Keith

The Cedar runs more or less from Austin, MN down through Charles City, Waterloo/CF, and Cedar Rapids. Then things get foggy for me, but I think it cuts East to Tipton and dumps into the Miss somewhere down by Keokuk(sp?). How much is navigable depends on the boat you’re in. There’s about a five mile stretch here in CR that runs 7-15 feet deep, and I can get around pretty good. North of that, the average depth seems to be about a foot, but there are some pretty deep holes. It’s had me frustrated for the last few years. I want a second boat to beat around the rivers near home, but have no place to keep it.

I’ve had pretty good luck fishing the Cedar in the Northern tier of counties in Iowa, but mostly spend my time catfishing down around home. People who do well swear by it, and people who don’t swear at it.

Been using cranks. Jointed shad raps size 4 or 5 and like Keith said crawdad color. , the more dark red the better. By rocks to sand I mean troll out in the river where the rocks start to turn to sand. Usually the rock bottem only goes out so far toward the sand on the other side. They seem to like to be in this area. Above all cpr except a couple to eat. These small pockets of fish can be over harvested real easy