Upper Miss River Smallmouth Bass report 8-23-04

Even with the unusual cool summer weather we have been having lately, the smallmouth bass fishing is as predictable as your next morning’s alarm clock. What a difference a nice warm day can make to your fishing success this time of year. This past week we dealt with cool over night mid 30 degree temps and stiff winds to give us all kinds of issues when trying to dial in each day’s patterns for these transition fish. Every year, smallies make transitional movements with anticipated cool fall water temps closing in.

This week’s success is very much like previous weeks that I have experienced. The heat of the day is when the smallies seem to come to life as they are seemingly hitting most all presentations presented in a some what slow methodically manner. The fast buzzbaits and spinnerbaits that were working a few weeks back has seemed to go quiet over the past week and more subtle presentations have clearly became the winning tickets for producing a good day’s end of success. Jimmy D’s black 1/16th oz still remains to be my number one go to bait for this time of year. I have been finding myself fishing this jig for nearly 75% of the day. It’s a slow presentation that should not be used as a search tool. This time of year, I have my honey holes that have fish stacked up in areas and the best way to get fish to bite and not rile up the rest of the school is to quietly present a slow falling light jig right in there living room door.

Not saying buzz baits and spinner baits are not good baits for this time of year as they do an excellent job at finding fish in a hurry, but I find myself passing over lots of quality fish that I feel are willing to bite if you slow things down a bit. The more time you have on the water this time of year, the more spots and areas you will find that hold fish consistently year in and year out. Besides the Jimmy D black hair jig, I resort to two styles of plastics. Texas rigged 4” YUM Garret Tubes in the pumpkinseed color and 4” YUM Dinger’s rigged on a split shot are great alternatives when the fish are being particularly picky. These three presentations all have completely different looks when presented to a school of feeding smallies. When fish get wise, its always smart to give them something they have not seen before.

The first picture is of Doug Turner’s dad Rusty hoisting a pretty 19”+ smallies that fell victim to a Jimmy D black 1/16th oz river bug. Nice fish Rusty, I hope you and Doug enjoyed the short day we had together. The second picture is of Brian Jacobsen holding a nice big 20-3/4” smallie that fell victim to a texas rigged YUM garret tube. This was Brian’s biggest smallie to date! Congrats Brian! The third picture is of Mark Stanley holding a nice 18-3/4” smallie that got tricked by the Garret tube as well. Both Mark and Brian caught some quality fish on that day’s outing (we lost our fair share of respectable fish as well). Thanks again guys! The last picture is from Sunday’s trip with Ralph and Tina Elwer. The picture is of a respectable largemouth that we rarely see in my neck of the woods, but a nice surprise to say the least. This is one of MANY bass that Tina pulled in on the split shot rig. For awhile, Tina was putting on a clinic to both Ralph and I as the bass seemed to take a huge liking to this subtle rig. It was nearly every cast for a half hour! Nice going Tina! Sunday’s trip was the complete opposite from Saturday’s trip where we ended the day with good numbers (50+) of fish, but the overall size was off the mark a bit. 18” seemed to be best we could manage to actually boat as we lost a couple nicer 19”-20”fish.

Thanks to you all this week for sharing my boat with me and I look forward to the next time we have the opportunity to fish together again! I had a fun week.