Smallmouth Bass, Mississippi River, Minnesota

With borrowed waders snugly clamped to my legs, I trudged along into a strong head wind along the shores of the Mighty Mississippi. Early January in Minnesota is a great time to fish for smallmouth...right? Right.

Rocks. I slipped on rocks. I lost a newly purchased finesse jig on a rock. And I caught a few fearsome smallmouth bass off of these rocks. I love rocks.

I was very fortunate this day to get out with a friend and fellow BASS Member, Dan, for a morning of great bass fishing. I sought Dan's guidance, as he has spent much more time than me on this stretch of river. I stepped where he stepped, nearly made casts to where he cast, and tried to follow suit with the tackle I was using. My personal gear consisted of a 6'6" spinning rod and reel with 6 lb Seaguar fluorocarbon. As I mentioned, I was casting a 1/8th finesse jig with a round head with a 3" Strike King Rodent trailer. It seemed I was snagging less than Dan with a round jig versus his football head jig. After I lost this finesse jig to a hungry rock, I dabbled with a tube jig and I was snagged up almost every cast.

Dan's 19" Smallmouth

Our presentation was very basic. Cast and let the jig bounce along the rocks with the current. We had to constantly pop our jig while it was rolling along to hop, skip and jump between and off the rocks. The smallmouth bit very light on a few occasions, and I was fooled a few times thinking I caught a rock until it was trying to shake its way free.The fights were tough, a mix of smallie genetics and a constant current. Awesome.

My largest fish of the day was about 3.5 pounds on the smallmouth, thumpin' richter scale. Dan caught a nice 19" bass that we estimated to be around 4 pounds. It was great to catch bass with open water fishing tackle as floating chunks of ice cruised down the middle of the river and the shores were lined with a layer of snow. Just think, the week before I was fishing on 14" of ice on Lake of the Woods. Minnesota can be awesome. 

Great colors on Carl's Smallmouth Bass

Lake of the Woods Fishing Report

Walleye was on the menu last weekend after our first successful day on Lake of the Woods in northern Minnesota. My fishing trip was based out of Sportsman's Lodge, an overall great experience anchored by 3 great friends, a lot of laughs and competitive Risk games. Our experienced guide set us up in a large, well-heated fish house in approximately 24 feet of water. Armed with the provided fathead minnows, we landed and kept 8-10 walleye and sauger mix. Our largest slot fish was 21 inches with our best keeper being a solid 19 inches. I caught a great 16 inch sauger that tasted great that night on the frying pan. The second day we caught less keepers totaling out at 4 total. We were hoping to slam them, but from our guide's reports, it was a slow biting day. We did hear from our other friends that the fish were biting better in deeper water and that shiners were the ticket. Our best producing jigs were gold redeyes, green glowing jigs and sometimes buckshots would pull in a fish or two. We caught a lot of smaller fish over the 2 days and schools of tullibees gave us some surprising and much needed action. A guide in the next house down landed a 40-50 pound sturgeon and I have a few photos of that coming to the blog soon. The bite was light, however, when we jigged hard, we were able to call in a few biting fish. It was a great couple of days and I really needed to catch a few fish. Mission accomplished!