Last year, almost a year to the day, I went fishing with Pete and Greg on the Mississippi River. I was lucky enough to get to do this again this year yesterday on July 27th and we might go out again on Thursday. Once again this year Greg is getting ready to fish a tournament and is trying to get a feel for the water. We have been getting a lot of rain recently and just as I expected the river was up and a more murky than last year. We were on the water around 6:45PM and the wind was blowing pretty good. We didn't run nearly as far up river as we did last year most likely due to our limited time before dark. We started fishing the West shore.
Since we were 3 to the boat I only brought 2 rods. I started out trying a clown Spro Bronzeye Frog. I had put a rattle in the bait that weighed a little to much and the frog would sink quickly if I didn't keep it coming in pretty steady. In 15 minutes I had maybe one hit and so I switched up to a 1/4oz Chart/White Strike King Spinnerbait with Chart. blades. Nobody had caught anything when I switched baits but Greg did have a blow up on his buzzbait. I put the first fish in the boat, a 9inch Pike. Greg and I spotted a nice 18+ inch Smallie but we couldn't get it to go. I had a good hit but it didn't hook up and towards the end of our drift I caught the first Smallie which was about a 10 inch fish.
We went back up the river and this time drifted down the East shore. It wasn't long into the drift when I tied into a 16.75" Smallie which was the big fish of the night. I didn't get a picture of this fish because the camera batteries went dead. When I was messing around with the camera Pete lost a big smallmouth on the way in. We caught several fish as we entered a shoot that went by some islands. If the water wasn't up it would have been to shallow to take this route and we did get hung up once as it was. We didn't have any luck in the shoot or behind the Islands.
It was after 8PM and we made a longer run up river to a spot just behind some islands. A huge eagle flew out of a tree almost right above us as we were moving in behind an Island. Greg had a fish miss his buzzbait and I cast around the same area with a bullfrog colored Berkley Frenzy Popper and was rewarded with a high leaping hard fighting 16.5 inch smallie. I didn't get a picture of this fish because it was bleeding pretty good and I wanted to get it back in the water ASAP. I fished the popper the rest of the night and caught several more smallies. The popper was the most productive lure in the boat, although Pete had quite a few missed fish on an in-line spinner. The fish stopped hitting about the time the mosquito's started coming out which was actually later than you would think. I ended up with 8 to 10 smallies total which was best out of the 3 of us.
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