bassfishingtoday

The past two winters, I have been doing my best to beat Cabin Fever by casting to open water smallmouth on the Mississippi River.  Don’t get me wrong, its a great time and beats the heck out of ice fishing or sitting at home watching “World’s Greatest Fishing Show” (No offense Z); but there are times when I want to fish for big green bass, with big lures and big sticks.  The river smallies are all about 8lbs test and 1/8oz tube jigs with spinning gear.  There is a part of me that is only satisfied with 1/2oz jigs, 7′ Heavy Baitcasting gear and thunderous bone jarring hooksets, you know what I mean????

 It was a Super Sunday for me indeed, but that had little to do with the Football game that evening.  Bill and I got up early, got to the walking path as the sun was still below the horizon.  When we arrived to the area, it was breezy and about 21 degrees.  Luckily I was all bundled up with Akinetix hat and gear, makes a big difference when you are fishing in January and you are dressed for the weather.  We were the first ones there this time and agreed to stay close so that we could get good pictures if we caught larger fish.

Bill & I were both giddy and anxious to get our rods unwrapped and make that first cast, my first pitch I had a solid tap and missed the fish, threw back in got thumped again and reared back only to break my line.  After getting a new black & blue 1/2oz Tru-Tungsten jig tied up, it was on, Bill and I were hooking fish at a steady pace.  We were getting bit on nearly every cast when we started.  It only took us about 30 minutes for each of us to get to double digit bass landed.  We even had several doubles.

This was an early 4lb double, my fish is in my right hand, Bill’s in the other

I then walked over to a shallower weed flat and started working that area, I got some bites and some fish, but my 1/2oz jig was constantly fouling with slimy grass, so I tried swimming the jig.   I caught a few fish doing that, but that heavy jig was not ideal for swimming it in that shallow water.  I returned with a 6″ Baby bass BassTrix swimbait to that grassy area and immediately started hooking up on some nice bass; very cool!  After about 6 bass and a few missed fish, they finally ripped my paddle tail off, so back to a 3/8oz Fall Craw jig that I could both swim and work on the bottom.

One of the nicer bass duped by a 6″ BassTrix Paddle Tail

Catching fish on the jig was very fun, but then my mind started to wonder…..  could I catch them on my 7″ Bluegill Tru-Life swimbait????  So I convinced myself to tie it on, in the deeper area where we started, I could get bass to follow on most casts, but they would not commit to hitting it.  I then walked down to the shallow grass area where it was more wind swept and on my 2nd cast, my rod loaded up with a nice bass.  I then caught 3 bass on my next 5 casts with the big swimbait.  How awesome to be on a hot swimbait bite on the first day of February where most anglers are ice fishing in this area???

One of several bass on my Tru-Tungsten Tru-Life bluegill

I went on to catch 38 bass in total, with many 3-4lb class fish, Bill tallied 44 all in about 4 hours.  So if you do the math, that is a bass every 6 minutes for each of us or 3 minutes combined.  It was so fast and intense, I hardly noticed how bad I gashed my finger until I got looking at the photos, no pain, no gain.  I could go into a ton more details, but I got lots of pictures, they explain best!!

 
Nice bass, with a face full of Blk/Blue TT Jig!

 
Bill got a great shot of me early on fishing that weed flat as the sun rose

  
Bill’s big fish, caught several, but its my blog!   Another solid Jig fish for me

Rich
RichLindgren.com

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