Mississippi River - 9/27/09

Mark and I hit the river about 7:30 this morning. It was a beautiful morning. Crisp air, fog rolling off the river and a smooth ride to our first spot. We were targeting white bass again. We were fishing a dike break between two islands and the water really flows through there. We got nothing on our first spot so we decided to move. This time we headed out to the main river. We fished a U shaped dike on the outside, main cannel side. We caught 2 at this location. Then we moved over to the ouside, bank side of the dike. Again, we caugh two and I had one on, run straight at me and then under the boat. I had my drag too tight and as he went under the boat he came off the hook. He had that pole doubled over. I know it was a good fish. The key to this spot was we were sitting in about 2 feet of water on the inside current break and fishing out in the current where it dropped to about 8 feet. I think they were sitting on that ridge. Anyway, we worked our way down river fishing the same spot on 2 other dikes, but they produced nothing. Then we fished the backside of a partially submerged dike and caught 2 more. This spot has a LOT of potential. The back side of the dike has some sand on it and the water rolls over the rocks and creates a lot of turbulance. Then it drops to about 10 feet. We went back to our first spot and fished the opposite side which only produced a drum (on a spinner bait at that). It was a good day and we pulled out at Noon. A big thank you to Mark for going along. We've been trying to do this for quite a while. Now to get Matt Douglas out on the water with me!

Mississippi River - 9/20/2009

My brother-in-law, Dave, and I hit the river around 7:00 this morning. There was a slight drizzle coming down, with temps in the 60's (both ambient & water). We were going to target whites and wipers. We headed to the first dike I wanted to try and started casting into the current break. Both using crank baits, after a few casts & about 15 minutes, I wanted to tie on a different crank. As I'm re-tying, I was trying to explain to Dave how the stripes fight and how much fun they are, and BLAMO, Dave says, oh, here's one. After the first one we caugh a couple more and the rain started coming down. We also caught 2 drum on crank baits. As the fish quit biting, and the rain started to realy dump on us, we decided to call it quits. We were home by 9:00.

Of course it stopped raining by 10:30, but we were already done for the day. We'll try to get out again real soon.

Mississippi River - 8/2/2009

Matthew and I headed out on Sunday morning about 7:30. It was a beautiful morning. Crisp air and so much fog coming off the water that you could only see about 50 yards or so. The plan was to fish a few new spots Matt picked out by looking at Google Earth. With all the fog and limited visibility we decided to try the back side of a dike that he had marked. It was close to home so we wouldn't have to fight the fog too long. We came up on ths spot and it looked great. Some nice slow backwater and a great current break around the tip of the dike. We started at the current break throwing spinners, but nothing. So we worked the dike slowly back to the shorline and then down the shorline around some laydowns. We pulled one short off the dike and nothing off the laydowns. We fished the area for a little over an hour and around 9:00 decided to run North up towards Winfield. As the dam was coming into view and we were nearing our second fishing spot something was happening with the motor. As I slowed down it started violently vibrating. We killed the engine and raised the motor to have a look. Matt says "Well that's the problem. You're missing the tip of a blade on the prop. How in the hell does this happen. We were running along, 20+ feet of water, no 'thump' no 'shutter' nothing. Just a little vibration, and then a lot of vibration. So we decided we could take our time and limp home on the trolling motor, and fish at the same time. As we are making our way out of the main channel to the Missouri shorline, the trolling motor decided to stop working. Yeah, we are now having one of those days that happens to every boat owner, it's just a matter of time. We ended up tying up to a dock in Winfield and called Bryan to up and pick one of us up. He took me back to Riverside to put the Wellcraft in and go get the fishing boat. Of course I didn't have the key for the hitch so we had to run back to my house to get the key to unlock the Skeeter trailer so we could hook up the Wellcraft and put it in. We finally did and 2 hours later we had both boats back on the trailer and were headed to the house. We were home by 2:30. Wow, what a day. Now the question is, how much will be under warranty. I'm hoping they realize there was something wrong with the prop for this to happen.