Mississippi River Pool 5 Bass 11-4

The subtitle for this report could be “Post Halloween Spooktacular”. My guest on Friday was Rick Pelletier of Anoka MN. Rick is a very accomplished angler. He made it to the Bassmaster Classic through the BASS Federation and fished the BASS circuit the following year. Rick and I go back a long ways and we try to get together a couple of times a year. I usually join him in the summer on one of the metro area lakes and he comes and fish’s river in the fall. The date for this trip established assuming I’d have my Ranger back. I’ve had a series of motor problems and the repairs weren’t finished. We had the option to reschedule or fish out of my 14” flat. It was tight but we made the right decision. We hit one of those days that we won’t forget soon. The fish in the picture was the first fish of the day, and probably the biggest. She fell to a white and chartreuse swim jig. That was before we had burned 2 ounces of gas. Believe or not things got better from there. We didn’t get any monsters but had well over 50 fish and had a blast with topwater.

In the morning the swim jig was the best presentation, by mid-day it was spinnerbaits on wood. The picture is of Rick with a dandy largemouth that jumped all over his Booyah double willow spinnerbait. We found most of these fish in mild current very close to their summer haunts. They are moving but not very far. I suspect the next cold snap will move them closer to their over-wintering areas.

The real fun started when we found an area full of shad and bass busting them on the surface. I had a Super Spook Jr tied on, and on the first cast I had a strike but missed the fish. Rick followed suite and the action went on for an hour. It was great because we had enough action to work on different retrieves to get a hook-up. A lot of the fish would miss the bait and it would take several tries before they took the bait. My best spook fish took four slaps at my bait before she got serious. Some wanted the bait continually moved at a steady pace, others would hit if you stopped it, and others would come unglued if you moved it faster.

After we had perfected the retrieve, I switched over to a Lucky Craft Sammy to see how they like it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the Sammy but on this outing the bass wanted the SPOOK. What was interesting was I had about the same number of hits as Rick, but never had a fish hook-up on the initial strike, and had more fish that would quit after one slap at the bait. The Sammy sits almost vertical on the pause where the Spook stays flatter. Also, the Super Spook has a rattle. That may have been the difference. On Sunday I went back to the same spot with Brent Haimes (Fishnut) and we did the same comparison using a standard spook, which doesn’t have a rattle and a Super Spook Jr. We didn’t see any difference in the success ratio.

As you can see from this report that the fall bass fishing is still going strong. The water Temp has been stable right around 50 degrees for several weeks. The bass are taking advantage and feeding up for winter. If you can find them it’s a blast. Just need to remind everyone to release these fish right where you catch them. If you move them they may not have enough time or energy to make it back to the safety of their over-wintering areas. We want to see them fat and healthy again in the spring!