Upper Mississippi River Bass report 8-10-07

It has been a little while since my last report because I have been a busy guy the last several weeks on the water. The smallie bite on the Upper Miss right now is in top form. The lack of water we have seen this summer has put our river systems in a dire drought and have forced the smallies to some real predictable areas where the faster water flows. As much as I like catching all these smallies right now…I would rather have the river levels to where they belong. Farmers here in central Mn are in a severe drought with all their crops and the days continue to be hot and dry.
Anyway…on to the fishing;

This past Saturday, I was asked to help out some former sponsers of mine for taking a couple writers out in the boat for a day of smallie fishing with hopes of catching some picture worthy fish. The fish did not wait long to respond to our baits. We all nearly hooked up on several fish on the first spot. Topwaters, tubes, hair jigs, drop shots, etc..everything was clicking for most of the morning. Jeff Samsel was having his way with a good number of fish rigging a YUM Craw Papie on a drop shot rig, while Darl Black did his number on a bunch of smallies pitching a buzzbait and a YUM Dinger. I was up front in search mode swimming a 4″ tube or throwing a variety of topwaters.
The key for the day for us on this outing was finding those neck down areas of the river where faster water would be pushed through. This quicker water brought plenty of oxygen and lots of bait and the smallies were there in groves. We tallied the day with about 80 fish with a handful of 18-19-5″ fish.

On Sunday the St Stephen Lions club had their 14th annual smallie tournament that has been getting a lot of popularity over the years and on most years bring in some stiff competition with 60-80+ boats on this 25 mile section of river. This section of river has the top 8-10 miles of pretty skinny shallow 1-4 foot of water while the middle to bottom end is a much deeper and wider waters. The take off point was right near the middle portion of the pool and there was a mix of jets boats as well as some of the finest big motored bass boats. My brother Tony and I teamed up once again for this event and here is a little recap of the day…….
Tony and I decided it was best to run south for the first couple of hours with the expected number of jets running north. We were hoping to stick a couple nice fish south and then go north to fill the rest of the bag. Tony’s second cast of the day had a big smallie blow up on a topwater and we could not get that fish to chew again, so we stayed on the move. About 8:00am I rose a nice smallie on a topwater and I immediately reeled the topwater rod in and picked up another rod and threw out a 1/16th oz Riverbug and that 3-1/2# smallie completely inhaled that Riverbug on the drop. That was a fun fish! At 9:00am we decided that we hit all the spots that we wanted to hit, so we headed up river with one nice smallie in the box. From 9:00am until noon we could not produce another weighable fish, plenty of little 14-15″ fish, but nothing that was going to take you to the win column. We hit our number one pre-fish spot 3 times throughout the day and never produced a smallie…..We wanted to panic but realized that was not going to get us anywhere, so we shifted gears 180 degrees and started hitting every single little nook and cranny and went into the finesse mode and went slow and started connecting with nicer smallies one at a time. A couple nice 3# fish came on a wacky rigged YUM Dinger and one on a tube. At 2:30 (weigh in at 3:00pm) we made a desperate move to get our final 5th weighable fish. We went back to our number one pre-fishing spot in hopes of coping one out of an area that took some time to fish. Within a couple casts Tony hooks up on a nice 3#+ fish! We both made several casts to this spot and about on the 5th cast in there, this smallie hit. Little did we know that was the fish that made the difference for the day?
Overall we caught lots of fish, just 5 nice ones for the day. I guess it pays to be better lucky than good on a one day event!!!

With water levels on the extreme low right now the fish are pretty predictable right now and the bite is very good with numbers and bigger fish making it to the boat. I suspect this bite will carry right on through into Sept/Oct timeframe where we see lots of fish stack up together. Also……if you are a musky fisherman, now is the time to be on the rivers. The fish have been out in full numbers on several sections of river up here and have been willing to show themselves on a regular basis!