Mississippi River Pool 4-5 Bass

The week of May 6, 2007 was the week that saw it all. My guest on Monday was Al Haas of the Quad Cities. Al was at the Cabalas store in Rogers and wanted to stop in our area to sample the bass fishing in our area. Al is a very experienced angler so I wanted to show him how many different options we have here. The key was the fish were pre-spawn and we worked several schools of mixed large and smallmouth bass. Nothing huge, but lots of fun Pre-spawn fishing.

It was back to Rochester till Friday where my guest was Dave Dhurman of Texas. Dave is in Rochester on business and needed a day away from the grind and a chance to catch some of our smallmouth bass. I knew the spawn had started but expected to put together a reasonable day…wrong. The pre-spawn fish were gone…the spawning areas I knew were empty except for tons of northerns. It appears the first wave of the spawn took place during the week. We used the swim-jig to scratch out a few buck LM and a bunch of northers to fill out the day. The salvation was the great weather and the scenery.

On Saturday my guest were Mark Elert and Paul Thyron. Mark was an active tournament angler in the 90’s and won the BASS Northern Division Tournament on Lews and Clark Reservoir in 1995. Paul is a fly-fishing convert and relatively new to bass fishing but learning fast. With a tournament going on and most of the fish in a negative, post-spawn mood it was more of the same. Pre-spawn spots…spawning bays…post-spawn areas…all full of small bass and northerns. The good news was both Mark and Paul wanted to learn more about fishing the river so they were willing to look at “ what had been working”. After about 10 hours of fishing and the second stop in a current break near we confirmed what we suspected…the spawn was over. This girl hit a C-rigged creature bait crawled across the bottom. She had a huge frame but was thin and clearly spawned out.

We had “figured” it out…right…wrong. After a stop in an area I thought would be a good post spawn spot we notice some movement on the inside edge of a weed-line we found a mother-load of spawning smallmouth. It was tough to hook and land them but we did manage to pull 4 out of a foot of water in a spot the size of a short driveway. It’s the RIVER and as soon as you think you’ve figured it out, it proves you wrong! Thing should be much better next week.