Mississippi River Pool 5-5a Bass 11-4/5-2004

My fishing partner on Thursday and Friday was Steve Quinn of In-Fisherman. I met Steve some time ago at one of the many bass tournaments we have fished. I got to know Steve better when we were team mates on the 1997 Minnesota Bass Federation Team that won the BASS Northern Division Tournament on Gull Lake. We’re both avid bass fisherman but we share a common interest fishing them in the cold water periods. The times when many anglers don’t believe that bass can be caught. Steve and I have shared the boat several time in the past while doing research on catching wintering smallomouth. Steve has fished many of the best smallmouth fisheries around the country during the cold water period. That experience, and our fishing on pool 4 of Mississippi are described in the article “Extreme Smallmouth” in the October-November 2002 issue of In-Fisherman Magazine. This time Steve and I were just going to enjoy the excellent largemouth bite on pool 5 and the smallmouth on pool 5a. The strong winds on Thursday limited where we could fish. But we were successful at catching quite a few largemouth using swimming jigs, 5” K-grubs and flipping 4” Yum Mega Tubes. The numbers were good but the size was a bit disappointing. What peaked Steve’s interest was how heavy of current the largemouth were existing in.

The 15-25 mph northwest winds did put us in some bays that were holding some good-sized northern pike. What we are seeing now is the results high water of 1998. The fish surveys of the following years indicate that the northern spawn was very successful. Now we have a lot of fish that are 6 years old and many are in the 30 plus inch range. On Thursday our hook-to-land ratio was dismal, if memory serves me right it was northerns 8, fisherman 3. We simply got mauled by some huge fish. One in particular was a fish that looked to be over 36 inches that Steve had on for some time. It’s hard to understand how you can lose a fish after you fight them all the way to the boat. But when you see the spinnerbait blades ripped off and the wires mashed it leads you to believe they clamp down on the bait so hard that you just can’t get the hook set. Without steel leaders we also got bit-off quite a few times. I would like to tell you we were using a specific model and color spinnerbait but the truth was the ugliest baits, the ones you were willing to sacrifice, were working great. The northern that Steve is holding in the picture was about a 33” fish.

On Friday morning we hit pool 5a to sample the wing dam smallmouth bite. On our first stop both Steve and I lost a fish in the 4-pound class which shut them down for some time. We work the dam for about an hour able to catch about a half a dozen decent fish and one in the 20” range. On the return trip Steve caught the 19-inch fish in the picture on a grub swum over the dam. By late morning the wind was back up so we opted to return to pool 5.

Based on our experience from Thursday, we decided to target the northern pike. Our hook-to-land ratio improved considerably and by day’s end we landed 17 fish but lost several nice fish. The average size was in the 28-30” range and the biggest of the day was the 32” fish Steve is holding. The largemouth continued to bite and although most of them were in the 13-15” range they were willing and entertaining. I believe Steve left with a favorable impression of our fishery.