Mississippi River, Pool 4-5 Bass

We started the weekend fishing the Great River Team Bass Classic on pool 4, 5 and 5a on Saturday. It’s a well-run tournament put on by the Great River Angler Chapter to benefit the Reel Kid’s Club. I’m encouraged to see tournaments with good causes benefiting from our fun. My partner for the day was Jim Johnson from LaCrosse. Jim is a very accomplished tournament angler who has made it all the way to the Bassmaster Classic through the BASS Federation ranks. I drew Jim at the BASS Federation Northern Division Tournament on Georgian Bay, Ontario last fall. We hit it off and agreed we would try to find a local team tournament to fish. After Friday’s miserable practice, I was ready to call Jim and cancel. However Saturday was a different day – things went well. We won the tournament with just under a 3 pound average per fish. Our big fish for the day was 3.3 pounds. We weighed all largemouth, and caught lots of fish in the same size range (cookie cutters). It is difficult to decide which fish to keep when they are so close to the same size. Most of the fish came on top-water around vegetation in current. Our backup pattern was jigs in wood in the current. Current was the key. No moving water, no fish! It’s great to fish with someone who does things differently. Jim does some unique things and has every detail covered. Jim was on fire on Saturday. I actually backed off and watched the man at work. It’s awesome to see someone who is in the ZONE.

Sunday’s quest was Gregg Kizwski of Barron WI. Gregg has seen some of the fishing reports on In-Depth Angling and wanted to check out pool 4. Gregg is a very good bass angler and is familiar with fishing the river. Gregg lived in LaCrosse for some time and has been a long-term member of the Wisconsin BASS Federation. We started the morning with patchy fog that kept us from running any long distance. We opted to hit some of the wing dams and points close to the launch. With the low light conditions many of the wing dams produced both large and smallmouth bass. As the fog lifted we worked our way up to the foot of the lake and found cooperative fish on many of the main channel points and current breaks. As the boat traffic increased, we switched to a series of stops in the back channels. We hit cut banks, wood, and vegetation in current and found the bite was slowing, but we were able to catch fish on most stops. The fish seemed interested, but bit short fairly often. Gregg was swimming a black ¼ oz jig with a smoke Yamamoto single tail grub and came back without a tail at least a dozen times. I suspect the folks at Yamamoto Baits appreciate Gregg’s day on the water. The photo is the best fish of the day. I fell for Gregg’s swimming grub off the rip rap on Peterson Lake. All-in-all it was a good day for numbers, but the size was a little below expectation. Gregg is a great guy to spend a day in the boat with, and I believe he was impressed with pool 4.

Additionally, it is interesting to see the shallow water walleye and sauger bite is still going on, even though it is the end July. The photo is a walleye I took off a closing dam on Sunday. That is no surprise, but I’m still seeing a fair number of fish in 2-3 feet of water in vegetation and wood. The photos never do justice to the coloration of a sauger in shallow water. They tend to be very black with blotches a bright gold. They are a gorgeous fish when they live in shallow cover.