Every year in August the last couple years, Pradco Outdoor Brands gather up a handful of outdoor freelance writers and a handful of their upper Midwest Pro-Staff for a week long fishing adventure to the mighty upper Mississippi river with the primary target for smallmouth bass. The object of each day’s trip is to share your boat with a writer and catch as many nice photo caliber fish as possible each day on various techniques that will cater to their story ideas or even spawn new ideas that an angler does a little bit different than anyone else out there. Needless to say I had a blast as I do every year. Dealing with such a talented group of individuals each day is a pleasure in its own.
As most August days go, we deal with hot muggy weather in the 80-90+ degree temps, however this year was different. Cold, wind and rain outlined our week long fishing, and the smallies went from exploding on topwaters and jigs to carefully picking up 4” Yum dingers presented on a split shot and Booyah Boo jigs in 8-14 feet of water. Bottomline, we had to work harder for less and that meant fishing your confidence spots with a lot more persistence and concentration. Instead of the smallies cruising the shallows with the feed bag on, they had slipped off the first break in slightly deeper water. The fish were willing to cooperate, but the speed you worked you rigs became that much more important to success. Using these slower and deeper techniques produced several nice 18”-20” fish each day with a daily tally of around 15-20 fish being the norm.
One plastic that I have really fell in love with for smallies is the 4” and 5” YUM Dingers. These plastics are about the most versatile plastic that I have found that produces smallies in just about every condition. You can rig and fish these “do nothing” plastics in just about any fashion and they will produce fish. As mentioned earlier, the cold snap of weather forced us to fish slowly. Fishing top waters all day was a gamble in these conditions, however if you stuck it out some nice fish were to show for your efforts but the numbers were down. My day typically started out fishing fast and covering water the first couple days to try to get a feel of the mood of the fish only to realize that I was passing up a lot of fish and needed to slow down. Periodically however, I would kick my Minn Kota Maxxum 101 up and cover water due to small spurts of active fish.
This weather definitely put a crimp in our efforts all day long each day, but by day’s end, we had lots of nice fish for pictures which was the primary focus for the day. I would like to personally thank all of writers that made their way up to Minnesota as well as Pradco Outdoor Brands for giving me the opportunity to fish with some of the best products that are in the fishing industry such as BooYah, Yum, Bomber, Cotton Cordell, Rebel, Smithwick, Silver Thread, etc…
See you on the water!
WOW
Your on them bud. Thanks for sharing those pictures and report. 
Although I did not have enough time to get all the nice quality fish on my digital camera over the past week, I was able to sneak a couple unique shots in there.
Here is one of the writers Darl Black from PA hoisting a HUGE carp that drilled his 4″ YUM Garret tube in about 10 foot of water!
Those carp are an ugly worthless fish in my opinion, but I’m sure on smallie gear they are a blast to catch. Bunch of nice fish you got there.
Good fishing in front conditions,some real nice smallies!
Welcome to IDA olemissman
Nice report Steve.
Were you rigging the Dingers wacky(sp?) or with a jig head?
fish any time,
I had rigged the dingers 3 different ways and boated fish on all three. The most productive way for me was rigging the dinger weedless and then putting a small split shot about 18″ up from that and slowly pull and shake it near the bottom. This worked well when the fish were in about 6-8 foot of water.
When the fish were real shallow, I would rig it wacky style or again weedless and unweighted and pitch it up under trees and grass and let it fall slowly.
When the fish were deeper, I was having good luck rigging a heavier drop shot style and work it down the break in 8-14 feet.
Did real last night on black Jimmy D’s 1/16th oz river bugs. These jigs are the best hair jigs for smallies that I have ever had the pleasure to fish with. Earlier in the day they wanted it worked very quick wiht quick erradic snaps of the rod. As the sun got low in the sky, they wanted a slow taut line (free fall) drop. We boated near 30 smallies last night and 80% were all caught with Jimmy D’s jigs.
IF any of you are interested in knowing more about these jigs, feel free to drop Jimmy D a line via email or by phone or by simply checking out his website. He specializes in custom jig and fly tying to your request but also has a big lineup of models.
Here are just a small sample of what he does. Look for more updates to this website in the near future.
Jimmy D’s Website
Nothing better than getting into a nice batch of smallies. They are cleary one of the hardest fighting small fish around. Gotta love it when you get into them like that.
Nice report and pics!! I know you have heard that alot, but I just thought I would tell ya again.
buckmaster,
Thank you very much for the supportive gestures! Glad you find the report and pics enjoyable!
For me as a walleye chaser, I anxiously await this time of year every season as its one of the most enjoyable bites that I can experience.
As we speak, the smallies are bunching up big time in the rivers. You find one and you will often find a nice pile (10-15) of them in one little spot. Minnesota impliments a mandatory catch and release restriction in mid-Spet to prevent an overharvest of these sport fish due to their vulnerablilty. 40-60 smallies days are almost the norm this time of year with half of those fish hitting the tape at 17″-19″ with a very realistic shot at boating several over the 20″ range per day…..To me, that spells one heck of a great time and the best of the entire year is right around the corner in early Sept. Look for my upcoming report by the end of the weekend as this week showed a rebound of a bite from the cold snap we had last week.
Thanks again!