This past Saturday looked to be one of our last truly semi-warm days here in Minnesota.  So my bass fishing pal, Josh Douglas, and I decided to chase some cool water bronzebacks.  Josh & I got on the river a little before 10am, it will still plenty cool, probably 45 degree air temps and water temps hovered around 48-49 degrees.

Our first quick stop around a bridge did not produce any bites.  We bounced down to our second area and I quickly caught a nice 2lb plus chunk of a smallie on 4″ Green Pumpkin Copper Flake Mizmo tube rigged on a 1/4oz Bite Me Rattle head.  I then got excited and launched it into the trees   I then had another fish on with a baby ring fry that came off.  Josh then caught a smallie on his 3″Yum Tube, he ended up catching a couple in a row.  Early on we were getting several bites, but not getting hooks into the fish, kind of a finicky bite.

We then decide to try the opposite bank where the sun was hitting it and hopefully warming things up and getting the fish going.  Josh quickly broke off over there and then I lean back into a very solid fish on a 3″ Green Pumpkin Power tube on a 1/8oz head. 

It took a minute or so to bring her in, she was a beautiful and stout 18″ smallies that tipped Josh’s hand scale at 3lbs 12oz.  As Josh retied I caught another 14″ fish and another nice 3lb smallie.

Not a good pic of my fish, it was bigger then Josh’s below

We then work our way down stream to a new area and we started getting several bites, but once again it took a few missed bites to finally connect.  We ended up catching a nice bunch of fish in this area. I caught most of these on the baby ring fry and Josh his favorite Yum tube.  At this time I think I had 7 smallmouth, Josh about the same, maybe a couple more.  We made a quick stop where I caught the biggest fish and Josh got a 3lb 11oz fish on a little Biovex craw.

We then decided to try the previously shady bank from the morning again.  Josh caught a couple on the tube and then I on my fry.  Josh then tried a Baby Paca Craw on a fairly heavy 1/4oz Tru-Tungsten Sinker to work down the break and immediately started really catching some nice smallies and I could not buy a bite on my tube or ring fry at this point.  After seeing that, I picked up my 3/8oz Sunfish Tru-Tungsten jig with a big green pumpkin chunk and ended up catching the next 9 smallmouth in a row.  The fish must have really been keyed on a crawfish bite, because they were chowing that jig, that was a ton of fish to catch smallies on my favorite jig like that!!!  Josh got one last nice fish on the paca craw and it was time to call it a day.

In the end, I had 17 total smallies, Josh about the same.  We caught them several ways and a lot of nice fish.  Not sure, but that may be my last trip out on the boat this year, but there is definitely some winter shore fishing smallie action to come as well.

Rich
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