Its been a little while since my last report and I thought I would throw a fishing report your way to get a blood pumping a bit. The bite on the Upper Miss River for smallies has been nothing short of fantastic the last 2 weeks and it should stay this pace for weeks to come. As I have mentioned in my previous reports, this River Pro jet boat that I am running now has opened up so much water that is nearly untapped. Fishing all day long and not seeing another boat and mustering up enough smallies to make your arms ache?
That spells fun in my book.
On to the fishing.
I have seen great differences in fish behavior depending on the section of river you are fishing. A smallie is a smallie regardless of what river you are in, but peak feeding times and hourly movements has differed from one pool to the next. I guess that’s what makes these fish so adaptable. Up until two weeks ago, I was spending most of my time on the Anoka/Champlin section of the Miss river pre-fishing for a river tourney that took place on July 8th. Our pre-fishing that we had done prior to the event told us to stay on the move for the first couple hours and hit your high percentage spots first and then slow down a bit later and probe either the deeper haunts or shallow shade areas once the sun got high in the sky. The fish we were getting pre-fishing were very nice fish but the numbers were down a bit from what we were expecting. We found out a few weeks ago that the Coon rapids dam was having some problems and the water was not being controlled and basically had a “leak”. With this issue, the river was dropping nearly 3-4 inches per day. This meant each outing you were basically finding new fish and new water because your spot prior was nearly dry!
Come tourney day we got a good boat number and quickly ran up to the skinny waters that I had fish going while pre-fishing. Within a couple casts I hook up with a nice 19” fish for fish #1. My brother Tony minutes later sticks a really nice 20”+ (that later took big fish of the day). Another 10 minutes rolled on and Tony stepped up and stuck another 19” fish to give us 3 nice fish in the box within the first 20 minutes of our arrival. At this point the high fives were in full swing and we were excited to try and fill the bag. The rest of the day consisted of upgrading our bag of two more fish of the 17-1/2” caliber. By days end we got lucky and won the event plus big fish of the day. It was our first win together and we had a blast!
Back to the present,
The last 2 weeks of smallie fishing has been fantastic on the upper skinny waters of the miss river. Topwaters, tubes, swim jigs, hair jigs have all taken fish equally at certain times of the day with the exception of the topwaters. Topwaters such as buzzbaits, Pop-R’s, spooks etc….seem to get the attention no matter what time of the day. SO if you are looking for that perfect bait for up here on the skinny, go to the surface. Location…Water levels are low, so finding higher current areas is the key. Our best depths have been 1-3 foot current swept areas. With water temps in the 80’s and low flow, these smallies are really opportunistic feeders right now and will usually show themselves on something that is presented near their front door!
My July is booked up right now, but August and September has some openings if any of you are interested in tackling lots of skinny water smallies!
Great report as always Steve.
Steve, that just ain’t right.
It has to be improper to use “Skinny” and those Brutes you are catching in the same sentence. 
You certainly have the smallies dialed in
Those are some beautiful fish
dave
Nice report….you got my blood pumping!
I’ve always heard the’re ain’t no smallies in that nasty arse river?
nice
Good job
On the win.
Nice report
Thanks for the Tuesday trip Steve, as always, there was good times to be had.
Anyone looking for some guided hot smallmouth action on the upper Miss, Steve is your guy.
NICE REPORT DZ
Great Report Steve and congradulations on your’s and Tony’s win!
BTW, thanks again for the Amazing Ride in your River Pro and for some great fishing last week. What a way to access those fish we could never get to in the past.. even though my 25hp shows that we tried to get to them a few times…
Steve, as always…Great Report!! I can’t wait to get back up there again!!!
You’re killin’ me here. I’ve got to get up there for some of that smallie action sometime. Nice job Steve!
Wade,
I think somedays it should!
Shaggy and I were out this Tuesday up on the skinny waters and we were committed (on plane) through a very nasty small section of water that is 4-8 inches deep with boulders scattered all over that are a couple inches below the surface. Well I made a turn that looked like the route we needed to go (split second decision making) and I realized I lined my self up to a good sized slightly hidden rock. I hammered the throttle to get as much boat lift as possible. We both cringed as we glided over it and barely bumped this rock. Shaggy and I looked at each other and and just laughed. Not that I reccomend this type of behavior with this boat, but in a situation where I had no choice it was good to know that the boat reacted the way it did. With the re-enforced hull that is on my boat, I hardly noticed a scratch. What a ride that boat is. As I always say, its a purpose only boat. But once you get to these dreamable spots, you have the conforts of home to fish out of when you get there!
Steve, it was nice meeting you out there today! We had a fun day on the river (more like a creek) with a whole gang of RiverPro’s (and my HawgTracker
). Largest we got today was 17.5″ 
Congrats on winning the Anoka Tourney and good luck in 2 weeks.
steve, sounds like fun…one of these days we’ll hire you again and you can really show me your spots for monsters up there.
micah
Hawgtide,
It was nice meeting you too! You guys had a excellent day out there. River sure is low up there!
Are you guys looking for any additional members in your bass club?
Micah,
The best is yet to come…..
Steve, the topic of new members has been brought up recently and I believe the majority wanted to wait until winter to add new members, but there’s always exceptions to the rule.