Favorite Fishing Destinations Countdown: No. 8 - Upper Mississippi River, Minnesota

Thank you to Darl Black for use of his photos, including this one of Steve Dezurik and me looking mighty goofy in our matching shirts and hats but displaying the kind of smallmouths that make certain stretches of the Mississippi River so fun to fish, plus the close-up of a another Mississippi River smallie that is inserted below.

I can't think of another fishery that flies under the radar quite like the Mississippi River upstream of Minneapolis for smallmouth bass. Based both on my experience and all I've ever heard from others who have visited my favorite sections, the fishing is simply exceptional. I believe the main reason it gets minimal acclaim is its location. Minnesota is the Land of 10,000 Lakes, after all, and anglers there have a "lakes" mentality. So many lakes in all parts of the state offer great fishing, often with fishing resorts on their banks, that the rivers get overlooked. Closely related, Minnesota is walleye country, and many anglers there simply don't care about smallmouth bass.

I've always likened the character of the fishing to what you can experience on a large Appalachian or Ozarks stream at its absolute best, except instead of catching smallmouths that average 3/4 pound, you catch fish that are mostly between 2 and 4 pounds, and any given fish that bites could be an absolute trophy. We didn't have means to weigh my biggest from the river, but I've caught a lot of big Great Lakes smallmouths, and I'm certain a giant that I caught on a Zell Pop in the Brainerd section about 10 years ago was very close to 6 pounds.

Beyond producing fast numbers, the stretches of the Upper Mississippi that I like best offer a style of fishing that I think is really fun. It's classic river fishing -- staying on the move and targeting eddies, current run-outs, ambush points behind rocks, etc. The fish are mostly shallow and in predictable river spots, and if you pay attention you can really pattern them. They'll also crush topwater during the summer. During one three day-trip, I kept a popper on one rod and a shallow dropshot on the other the entire time and never considered trying anything else.

The Mississippi River has many great smallmouth fishing sections, including a few above dams that can be fished effectively from a bass boat. However, the specific sections that I'm mostly talking about are the Monticello/Elk River section, which I'm guessing is about 30 miles upstream of Minneapolis, and the Brainerd section, quite a bit farther up the river. Both of these sections have to be floated, fished from a jetboat or waded in select spots because of plentiful shoal habitat.

I'm not sure when I'll have opportunity to return to the Upper Mississippi, but I'm constantly looking forward to that next time!

No Suprise: Biffle Takes Hardhead Approach

Tommy Biffle, winner of the Mississippi River Rumble. Photo courtesy of B.A.S.S.

It surprised me a bit, I have to admit, when I realized Tommy Biffle was riding a smallmouth bite on the Mississippi River. Few anglers are better known for their fondness for flippin' into shallow cover for green fish, and that very strategy was yielding big bags for some pros during the Mississippi River Rumble. Not so surprisingly, Biffle said on stage today that he caught his smallmouths with a Biffle Bug rigged on his signature Gene Larew Biffle Hardhead.

As it turns out, flipping and pitching for largemouths also was a big part of Biffle's pattern. He pitched the same Biffle Bug around every bit of wood he could find to produce a lot of his fish, and used the Hardhead/Bug combo in one key smallmouth spot that he stumbled upon in practice. The Mississippi River Rumble was the third B.A.S.S. event that Biffle has won with a Biffle Bug since 2010, when he won an Elite Series event on his home waters of Fort Gibson and introduced the Hardhead/Biffle Bug combo to the world.

This weekend's Elite Series win guarantees Biffle a spot in the 2013 Bassmaster Classic at Lake Guntersville, where there's a pretty good chance that he will have a Biffle Bug at the end of his line!

7 Spectacular Smallmouth Rivers

Fourth-generation guide Billy Rosner with a chunk of Vermilion River bronze.

A question I'm often asked is what species or type of fishing I enjoy the most. I'm an all-species angler in every sense, and there are aspects I cherish about everything from crawling up a tiny mountain creek to flipping from the deck of a bass boat to fishing from a big boat for ocean fish. Forced to choose, though, river smallmouth would get the nod. The places they call home; the floating, wading or jet boat approach; and the way they attack and fight puts river smallies ahead of the pack in that mind.

With June being an outstanding time to target stream smallmouth bass, it seemed fitting to share a list of my favorite moving waters for smallmouths.

A couple of disclaimers, for starters. I'm not attempting to name the seven best smallmouth rivers in the country. 1) These are personal favorites -- waters I've fished and enjoyed immensely -- but all are legitimately spectacular places to fish for smallmouth bass. 2) Order is alphabetical.

Buffalo River, Arkansas
Free flowing for 135 miles, mostly through federally owned wild lands in Arkansas' Ozark Mountains, the Buffalo National River offers spectacular scenery and fast action from smallmouth bass and lends itself to a host of floating and wade-fishing options.

New River, Virginia
Steep-sided, rugged and rural, the New River cuts a south-to-north swath through the western tip of Virginia, and a mix of mild and wild river sections produce some seriously big smallmouths (plus more than a few husky muskies) for anglers who know how to target them.

New River Gorge, West Virginia
I know. Same river. However, West Virginia's gorge section, with its crashing rapids, house-sized boulders and towering bluffs, deserves mention of it's own. Super-abundant fish with occasional giants, and all within a very dramatic canyon.

Penobscot River, Maine
Most Penobscot fish have serious shoulders and they hit topwater lures with absolute abandon. The river winds between dense forest and occasional farms, and you never know when you might spot a moose or a bear.

Spring River, Arkansas
As the name suggests, the Spring River rises from a giant spring, so its waters stay a wonderful temperature for smallmouths year 'round. Expect fun mixed catches of smallmouths, rock bass, rainbow trout, brown trout, walleyes and more. Avoid summer weekends, when giant "canoe hatches" occur.

Upper Mississippi River, Minnesota
Because Minnesotans favor walleyes over bass and lakes over rivers, you can enjoy some of the world's finest action for heavyweight smallmouth bass within an hour's drive of the Twin Cities, and you might not see another fisherman.

Vermilion River, Minnesota
Northwoods beauty, a canoe and big, mean smallmouths make for a fabulously fun fishing trip, and that's exactly what you find on the Vermilion River, which is WAY north in Minnesota -- almost to the Boundary Waters, in fact.

Mississippi River Provides Equal Opportunity

Florida pro Kyle Fox leads the Mississippi River Rumble by 3 ounces after one day of competition. B.A.S.S. photo by Seigo Saito.

The bad news for B.A.S.S. Elite Series pro Chris Zaldain is that he is in 82nd place in a field of 98 pros after day one of the Mississippi River Rumble. The good news is that he is less than 5 pounds out of the lead, and less than a pound and a half separates him from guys inside the cut line, which is 50th place. All but three pros weighed a five-fish limit on day one. All but four weighed between 10 pounds and 16 pounds, 8 ounces, which is what Kyle Fox brought to the scales for the lead.

What all that means is that almost everyone is catching them and that things are apt to get re-arranged a lot during today's weigh-in. If Fox or others toward the top of the leaderboard have indeed identified a spot or technique that is yielding a little larger fish on average that will become more apparent today, and more separation might occur as the tournament progresses.

Quite understandably, no one likes to say much about what they are doing after one day of a four-day event, although Fox did suggest that he wouldn't expect anyone else to be using the same approach as what worked for him yesterday.

Elite Series Competition Turning North

Kansas pro Brent Chapman leads the B.A.S.S. Angler of the Year race after six events. B.A.S.S. photo by Gary Tramontina.

The Elite Series Mississippi River Rumble begins tomorrow morning out of La Crosse, Wisconsin. The four-day event is the first of three on northern waters that collectively will wrap up the 2012 season. Next week, the pros will fish out of Green Bay. Then, following nearly two months off, they will wrap up the regular season on New York's Lake Oneida.

The pros have 66 miles of the Mississippi in three pools to fish this week. This La Crosse section of the river has extensive backwaters, which are expected to be very important in the tournament. Water levels, which can change daily on the big river, will play a huge part in determining the patterns that prevail.

The three northern events represent 1/3 of the schedule, so it will be interesting to see how points races continue to take shape. Brent Chapman currently leads the Angler of the Year Race, while Brandon Card leads the Rookie of the Year.

River Crossings

A construction-caused lane narrowing prevented me from peering quickly at the Maumee River as I drove across it in the family van yesterday. Major letdown. I'd have to hold out for a tributary crossing in Findlay and then for a few looks at the Miami River before our grand crossing of the Ohio.

For as long as I can remember I've always delighted in crossing or paralleling rivers during travels. In fact, I think the rivers we'd see during family trips from Florida to Minnesota were the events that best helped me bear the long car rides as a boy. Every time we'd start across a bridge, I'd begin a quick study of the river's character, consider what sport fish might call its waters home and then scan the water and the banks for fishermen with hopes of doing a bit of vicarious angling.

Often, I'd borrow my dad's atlas for a moment (or an hour) of what fellow home-school parents world dub "delight directed learning." Looking back, I have little doubt that I learned more about rivers during car rides than I did in all my geography classes combined. I'd trace the rivers upstream to figure out sources and then go downstream to see where they eventually flowed. Little by little, I was also piecing together differences in the appearances of rivers according to topography, regions of the country and settings.

Of course we commonly traveled the same routes (both within Florida and across the country), so time allowed me to get to know some rivers well, and I was able to observe things like how different the Mighty Mississippi would look from one trip to another based on the level of the water. Occasionally, on a Boy Scout trip or some other outing, I'd get to camp beside or canoe down one of the rivers I'd previously seen only as a snapshot and would be able to get to know that river much better.

Four decades later I enjoy crossing rivers as much as I did as a young boy. Often, I'm the driver, so I have to settle for much faster looks; however, I still like figuring out stuff about where a river came from, where it is going and what its waters hold. In fact, just this morning, I looked at the Maumee and Miami rivers on Google Maps and read a little more about the Maumee.

B.A.S.S. Mystery Solved Today

This afternoon, at 1:00 Central, the B.A.S.S. officials will announce the site of the Elite Series "Mystery Lake" event June 28-July 1. After the announcement, the waters of the venue will immediately go off limits to Elite Series pros until the week of the tournament, when the official practice period begins. Therefore, unless an angler made a very good guess and gambled on that guess or just happened to spend some time fishing in the right place, there was no pre-practicing for this tournament.

BassFan recently speculated that the tournament would be held at one of two venues in Wisconsin, and they had gathered good evidence to back that prediction. We'll find out this afternoon. I had said erroneously in yesterday's blog that announcement would be yesterday. I was simply confused.

The Mystery Lake concept takes a page out of B.A.S.S. history, as the first six Bassmaster Classics were held at mystery destinations, with all the competitors boarding and airplane and not knowing where they were flying. In late June, the competitors will all be driving their rigs from the Mississippi River in  La Crosse, Wisconsin, where they will have fished the previous weekend.

Congratulations Tommy Skarlis

Iowa walleye pro Tommy Skarlis won the FLW Walleye Tour opener on the Mississippi River. FLW photo by Brett Carlson.

After all the fish had been weighed at the FLW Walleye Tour opener on the Mississippi River, Tommy Skarlis of Waukon, Iowa had tallied nearly 9 pounds more weight than his nearest competitor. Skarlis' 72-pound, 8-ounce three-day sack earned him his seventh major victory as a walleye pro. Skarlis seems partial to spring fishing because five of those wins have come during the month of April.

I've gotten to fish with Tommy Skarlis a few times and have done some story and photo work with him, and working with him is always a pleasure. Therefore, I'm always delighted to see his name atop the leaderboard. Congratulations Tommy.