So where do you take a walleye guy who has a 7-6 Mille Lacs Smallie on the wall …into the JUNGLE. John Brugler (Love2Fish) was kind enough to let Tracking Bass and I use his Wild hockey ticket this spring. In return I offered to show him some of the pool 4 bass fishing. The topwater bite has been heating up here but the high blue sky’s the AM had the Smallies shut down. The beauty of the rivers is always more than one pattern working. Emerging arrowhead pads and spikes is a short-window pattern that works for a couple of week each spring. However, it requires heavy tackle and a no-holds-bared…horse em out approach. John was one-to-one with me on the bites but had a little trouble with the hookset and yanking em out. After a few try’s he got it down and landed some dandy’s. He also, had a mid 30” northern to the boat but I missed grabbing it.
The technique was all swim jigs and when you found one fish there were more around. There was no way to predict where they might be so it took a lot of casts to locate em. When you got around one they let you know. Many of the hits were preceded by a wake headed toward you bait.
After two hours in the jungle the cloud cover moved in and it was time to move out into the main channel for some smallie action. Rock and current was the key and the 2.5” Northland Mimic Minnow was the hot bait. I was using the 3.5” version and got less bites. That might have to do with a smallies size preference. At times they are focused on small minnows and will ignore anything that isn’t close to the size.
We finished the day in the rain on a school of 12-14” largemouth they were eating up topwater. Nothing big, but very entertaining. The last cast was a double so we called it a day.
Nice job John
I got to see the 7 lb 6 oz smallie the other day. That girl was huge!
The only thing I would add is that I think John’s mount is a replica.
I might have to try some of that river bassin’ My walleye prowess of late has been awful.
dd
I just wanted to add a quick note to this post. Thanks for the day on the water John. It was a blast. John took me to some cool spots on the river that the novice river guy would have never thought of fishing. This was my first ever river bass trip and it took me a while to learn the proper way to horse those suckers in out of the cover. I did much better however in the main channel. I think the main difference between walleye fishing and bass fishing is when you are bass fishing, with all thew casting you don’t have much time for a
, however with the fish John had us on who cares. For those of you who have never met or had the pleasure to fish with John Stears, it is a must. John, now that I know all you need to take me fishing is Wild tickets, why don’t you pick a couple of games next year and I will get you there 
Thanks again sir, I had a blast and would bass fish anytime after that day.
John
John,
You’ve got a deal. I wanted to post the fishing picture so people could how heavy the cover is we were fishing. What the picture doesn’t show is a 360 degree view. We were well into these bed. It was about 200 yards to shore and 50 yards to any open water