Mississippi River Smallmouth bass report 6-30-08

The season of transition is what we are seeing on the river right now here on the upper Mississippi River. Water temps rising quickly and water levels dropping rapidly can put a state of flux on the smallies at times in river systems. Several ways to combat these sometimes frustrating times and that is to look for feeder streams or creeks that feed into major river systems, or run and gun the main channel and keep targeting the high percentage summertime spots These two approaches seems to be my best thing going right now and its proving some positive results.

This past Thursday I took the day to share a boat with my Dad. Not being on the water for about a week, I had a lot to try to figure out in a hurry in order to try to put together a successful outing. After about 2 hours of hitting some late spring early summer traditional locations and only a handful of mid sized fish, I realized I better keep on trucking to find a better bite somewhere. We took a little boat ride and ran up a feeder stream that fed into the mighty miss and after a few minutes I noticed water temps were about 4 degrees warmer and some very clear water. Needless to say the smallies were in their traditional summer locations sitting right in or around the heaviest of current and hitting many different types of presentations. This subtle location move salvaged what might have been somewhat of a dismal day on the water, into a shallow water slugfest! Dad and I slip drifted the heavier current and pitched every little subtle current break as well as a every current swept piece of timber and the fish appeared to be just about everywhere we looked!

Friday I was joined by Jason Smith and his dad Ron and his buddy Ken. Being from Iowa, Jason inquired about the upper miss and wanted to take a stab at it and spend a long weekend up in the area. The idea was to spend one day with me and then follow suit the rest of the weekend with whatever kind of game plan we could put together to stay on fish t he rest of the weekend. We got on the water Friday morning and we immediately took off and ran up this feeder stream that my Dad and I were on the previous day. Within minutes of our arrival we all took turns sticking a smallie or small pike along the current swept banks. We started throwing a variety of presentations at the fish and waited for the fish to let us know what they had an appetite for. As the day rolled on and the sun got higher in the sky, the Rebel Pop-R became hands down the smallie favorite no matter the cover we fished. This truly shows we are in summer mode in various areas on the river. Our best fish for the day was a nice fish right on the 20” mark that Jason hoisted from the shallows. Nice fish Jason! We rounded out the day with 30+ fish with plenty of fish from 17-1/2”-19-1/4” range. Thanks again guys and I had a blast fishing with you guys!

Right now I would start throwing all those traditional summertime horizontal presentations that smallies are so notorious for. Topwaters, swim baits, cranks, spinnerbaits will all produce those active biters for you right now. I am still throwing the smaller Jimmy D’s Riverbugs with some success. We will see another window of opportunity with the Riverbugs as we get more into July. I like to use these smaller riverbugs for probing around timber in real shallow water. Midday smallies like to pull deep into heavy timber at t times and these slow falling hair jigs can be lethal at provoking a strike.
Hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend on the water coming up this 4th of July!