Mississippi River Headwaters smallie report

This past week has shown me a few changes that seem to be taken shape here on the river, or at least a slight hint of summer closing in a little bit and the smallies are reaction accordingly. Typical here on the Upper Mississippi River, we start to see smallies starting to school up pretty good in early Sept. But this past weekend has proven otherwise just slightly. Instead of finding lots of smallies spread out down along the shorelines like most of the sumer months thus far, we are starting to see fish beginning to slide down the banks and join their buddies into what we consider the “Fall Characteristics”.

I was joined this past week by Tom Wallrich once again for his desire and love to chase the almighty Upper Miss smallies. We started out the day pitching some shoreline current breaks only to find numerous smaller 10″-15″ smallies loaded in these areas. After a few hours of playing hide and seek looking for some bigger fish I decided it was time to pull out into the main channel and pitch some of the faster current areas that had considerable “more flow” and we were instantly reward with some nice sized smallies. Swimming a 1/4oz jighead and tube was Tom’s best presentation going for most of the day. As the day grew on, the smallies were showing signs of chasing more and more and the faster Tom retrieved his tube, the hotter the fish were in responding. Tom and I spent the better part of the afternoon with this approach seeking out some of the better sized fish in this stretch of water. Tom here is shown with a Sumo smallie that was just shy of 21″ on the tape. Nice fish Tom. Moments later Tom drummed a bigger fish on the back end of his tube and had it hit next to the boat in a violent fashion. Needless to say the braid Tom was using gave way to a small “nick” in his line and broke off at the boat side. That fish was all of 21″+.

This past Saturday, I had the afternoon to myself and decided to venture out in the rainy cooler weather we were dealt here in Central Minnesota. I initially had my doubts on what the bite would be like after dropping 30+ degrees overnight and a cold windy day following the cool down. Needless to say, I got to get my smallies whether the day is favorable or not. After getting an hour on the water hitting some of my usual haunts I realized that the fish were certainly in a what seemed to be a negative mood, so I decided rather than go to a finesse approach I am going to cover water quickly and try to look for some aggressive biters. So, I threw on a Booyah 3/8oz buzzbait and starting probing the steep banks. Almost immediately, I noticed that I was drawinf fish out from cover with the buzz bait but were reluctant to take a swing at it. So, each time I noticed a fish coming out of the cover, I would reel in my buzzbait rod and pick up my JimmyD Riverbug rod with a 1/16th oz black riverbug and drop it right on their head and got hooked up right away. This became the pattern for the rest of the day…the one -two punch! Seems as though the buzzbait got them riled up and the small slow dropping hair jig was too much to resist. I tried slowing down and probing these shallow water cover areas with some stickworms and light tubes to no avail, they wanted to loud obnoxious noise of the buzzbait to wake them up! I wish I would have brought the camera out on this outing as this proved some very nice quality fish. 3 fish over the 20″ mark made their way inside the boat and missing the opportunity on one more brute! I cannot believe the cold rainy day flew by as fast as it did.

Depending on what section of river you are on right now, either way the smallies appear to be cooperating without much hesitation at all. With the summer closing in, I anxiously await some of the best smallie fishing the river can possibly deliver in my opinion. THE BEST BITE IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER! This is the year I am going to try to outlast the smallies and stick around the upper Miss into November for some late fall smallie fishing! Looking forward to it!