Mississippi River Pool 2 Fishing report 5-8-05

With water levels dropping rapidly each day out, we are starting to see the river almost near normal stage and flow for this time of year. With that we have fish staging in areas where they should be for this time of season. Backwaters cuts have still claimed the majority of our fish the past couple trips out, but Wingdams have started to show some nice fish as of late. Look for the wingdams to turn on in the coming week or so. The numbers have been anywhere from 8-20 fish for an all days outing. The nice part about the fish you do make contact with this time of year is that they are some darn nice average sized fish.

What’s been working best for my boat? Crankbaits, hair jigs, plastics, and livebait have all produced for me the past couple trips, I guess you could say a little bit of everything. The nice thing about the bite now is the fish seemed to show themselves pretty quickly on a new spot. The fish are starting to put the feedbag on and you can usually pull up on a spot and either get bit with the first handful of casts. That’s my kind of fishing! Fish are still spread out, so getting a couple fish in a short order has been about all my spots have been holding for the active biters anyway.

As I mentioned above, lots of presentations are producing, but one bite that has started to show some fish consistently has been trolling the shallow sand flats in 4-8 foot of water. These areas all seem to have a fair amount of current flowing through there. Trolling the new Cotton Cordell Jointed Grappler Shad and small wally divers have put most of the fish in the boat for me thus far. This presentation seems to pick off the active and opportunistic biters, then going after these precise areas with 3-ways and crawlers has been the ticket to scratch a few more fish from the area before moving on. After you troll these shallow flats a couple times, you will find little turns or sharp breaks within the flat that the fish seem to relate to on each pass. These are the areas to slow down and either pitch light jigs or go after them with slow methodical presentations consisting of some live bait of choice.

Jimmy D’s Chartruese Weenie hair jigs and plastics coupled with BFishNTackle’s precision jigs have still been my 2 best tools for searching for those big fish each day.

With water levels dropping daily, the fish are starting to show themselves on traditional spots for this time of year. If I had to make a prediction for the coming 2 weeks, I would grab my Bomber 5A cranks and a pile of hair jigs and start dropping by some of your favorite Wingdams, because the time is near where odds of putting several big fish in the boat each day is coming soon to a river near you!