Mississippi River Smallmouth Bass Report 6-1-08

The smallie bite on the Mississippi River is red hot right now for big smallies! Even with rapidly dropping water levels, harsh thunderstorm and Tornado warnings, the bite still rebounds in amazing fashion. The bite right now is just about as good as it gets for a shot at boating a trophy caliber smallie in the river systems of the upper Midwest. Warm stable temps in the spring bring more and more smallies to the shallow with anticipation of their spring spawning ritual and can be some of the best fishing you may ever have! Along with this amazing opportunity comes an even bigger responsibility in protecting these fish and taking the utmost care when handling these beautiful fish.

I had the opportunity to fish with my Dad (Jimmy D) and one of my brothers Tony this past Saturday to share a share my boat for the day, have a few laughs and hoist a few fish and we did all of the above. Saturday we got on the water bright and early and took off from the ramp and ventured out to some shallow haunts that have been productive for me in the past few trips. With minutes of our arrival my Dad put his 1/16th oz black Riverbug to the test and instantly pops one of the biggest fish of the day! After a quick snapshot of this big smallie, he was at it again on the very next cast before Tony and I had a chance to get caught up. This was a shallow water seam that proved to hold not only smallmouth bass, but largemouth, northern pike, rock bass and even 2 channel catfish in the 4#-6# range. If that is not river fishing at its finest! The rest of the day we hopped around and poked our nose in just about every favorable slack water area that we could find, some proved great results while others sent us packing! With water levels dropping so fast, new current breaks are not all that favorable right now as they we full of current just about a week ago. This has not been enough time for the fish to pull into these areas with spawn on their minds. The best spots were seams that have had slow water for the last several weeks. If you just made your way to the river now…its hard to decipher between the two, so put in your time and you will be rewarded eventually.

Sunday I shared a boat with Jerry Henrickson and his buddy Kerry. After some very severe weather on Saturday evening, Sunday brought some very skittish and reluctant fish early on, but as the sun got up in the sky and started to put some warmth into the water, the fish responded quickly. However instead of Jimmy D’s Riverbugs being the fan favorite for the day a simple wacky rigged YUM 4” Dinger was top notch on this day and those two guys were catching 5:1 on me! By midday we started to see fish chasing minnows and get very active. Surely a cry from where they were early on, but perfect reason to stay patient and persistant! We had a heck of a day with over 30+ giant smallies with a mix of small to medium sized northerns and a handful of rock bass!

Right now water surface temps are steadily increasing daily and more and more fish have pulled into favorable shallow haunts and full of attitude and an unwillingness to give up in the fight! That’s why smallies are my absolute favorite fish to chase in any freshwater platform! As I have mentioned in my last fishing report, please respect these fish and handle these fish with care for a quick photo and gently release these fish back into the water so they can get on with their mother natured duties!

Good luck to all!