Upper Miss River report 8-28-03 (Little Falls, Mn)

The smallmouth fishing this past week has been nothing shy of spectacular on the Upper Mississippi river. It is the season for taking big fish and lots of them. I had the pleasure sharing my boat the entire week with a handful of outdoor writers that were hired by Pradco for some upper Miss smallmouth bass excitement. With the stable weather we have had over the last 3 weeks, it has only amplified the bite. Most presentations will take fish effectively right now. One presentation that really proved well the past couple days has been a technique called “jig swimming”. Jig swimming is a presentation that can be applied to just about any type of submersible lure, (ie. Tubes, hairjigs, stickbaits, etc..). The way you work the lure is the key to provoking neutral fish into striking or becoming interested. Let me explain a bit more on this in just a bit.

Overall our best locations have been current swept subtle points on an outside bend in the river with some deep water nearby. To take it a bit further, if I find a an area that I have just described and throw in a weed line of eel grass with a small sand shelf next to shore..bingo! That’s exactly the areas we have been concentrating on this past week. By deep water, I am referring to anything beyond 15 feet next to the weed edge. Some areas even quickly dropped to 30 foot in this area of the river were just as good. We did try some of the expansive weed flats throughout the inside turn areas with little to no results. You can occasionally get a big fish in these areas, but we were looking for the numbers game on our hunts. Once you found one fish, slow down and “jig swim” the area. (I know, I still have to tell you what I mean by this) For starters, use traditional search baits that you can cover water quickly with but stay effective. I like having about 6 rods rigged and ready while probing fishy looking waters. I will start out throwing the Rebel Pop-r tight to shore on clean cut banks. When I get into an area that have some overhangs or docks, I like to pull out a texas rigged 4” Yum Garret tube. And work the area a bit before moving on.

Now once we made contact with a fish, I will stop the boat in the area and pull out my black 1/8 oz “Jimmy D’s” hairjig and start swimming the jig for more fish. What do I mean by “jig swimming?” The fish recently have really reacted when we throw a little speed into the presentation. So, naturally I started burning the jig back to the boat in nothing more than a really fast paced straight retrieve. Nothing fancy for starters, just a quick flip back to the area and quickly burn it back to the boat. This may take several casts to get the fish to react, but they seem to really react to this fast paced retrieve. We saw several times that it pulled more than one fish away from the shoreline area. These fish either followed it very closely all the way to the boat or hit the lure at full pace. If the fish did not strike the lure on the way out, the fish seem to hang out over the deep water just deep enough to be out of sight with hopes of the pursued bait to reappear. If this was the case, we simply dropped the jigs over the side and did a quick vertical snap and fall to get them to strike. These little tricks helped us boat so many smallies over the past week. One of our best days consisted of catching about 60 smallies with close to 20 fish over the 18” mark. As you can see by the pictures, these fish have some real shoulders. Even a bonus Largemouth made it to the boat this week that taped out at just under 22”. Wow what a fish that was!

Next time you get a chance to chase smallmouth bass in your section of river, be sure to try the “jig swimming” to provoke and trigger more reaction strikes from these some what neutral fish. Check your state or lake specific regulations for slot restrictions or harvest limitations when fishing for smallies. As always, practice catch and release with these fish as they are a highly valued resource.

Good luck to all!