A couple weekends ago, I headed up to Wabasha, Minnesota, to do some autumn fishing on the Mississippi River with my father-in-law. Before leaving on Saturday morning, I got word from my in-laws it was snowing in Wabasha. Oh, and there were 40+ mph wind gusts. Awesome.
Sunday morning, the weather did an about-face. It was a beautiful, cool, crisp October morning like you’d expect in Minnesota. So we headed out to put the boat in the water, and hopefully catch some dinner.
We were targeting Walleye, but they weren’t biting. I hooked one Walleye, maybe 45-minutes into the day, while trolling a Rapala Deep Tail Dancer. But just as I got it to the boat, it threw the hook and disappeared back into the river. Shortly after, my Deep Tail Dancer snagged on something at the bottom, broke the line, and also disappeared into the river. Yeah, off to a great start.
After that though, the Smallmouth bite turned on, and didn’t stop. They went after any bright patterned lure we threw in the water…Firetiger, Hot Steel, and Clown Flash parents being the most successful. In all, we caught nine smallies. Battling and reeling them in on lighter power rods was a hell of a lot of fun, and a different experience than I am used to.
The nicest Smallmouth Bass of the day (pictured above) was 2.32 lbs., my personal best to date, caught on a Rapala Rippin’ Rap 06 in Firetiger.
Below is a small gallery of some of the Smallmouth Bass we caught, including the to-date personal best 2.32 lb. fish.
Fishing the Mississippi River in Minnesota makes me wish the Upper Fox River and Chain O’ Lakes wasn’t a suicidal endeavor for kayakers. It’s not on par with the quality of the fishing on the Upper Mississippi River, but it’s probably one of the best, if not the best, body of water in northern Illinois for fishing. Also, I need to get up to Minnesota more often to fish.
