First derby of the year will be late April on pool 4. Have not fished it for bass only walleye. We will be going out of Wabasha. Just looking for a starting point. I think we are going to be targeting both smallies and largies. Does the water warm earlier upriver because of the power plant or does that not paly as much in the spring because of the runoff? Also I'll be practicing a few days prior to the tournament and should have a open seat in the boat a day or two. Thanks for the info.
Last edited by WI-Bassin; 02-06-2022 at 10:28 AM.
Powerplant won't have anything to do with it. Search for warmest water you can find and you will find bass.
Lake Pepin won't play much into things. From the start of the river down just start fishing backwaters and you will find them.
Yeah, definitely was going to get into the backwaters for sure. I was thinking that maybe the small mouth would be in the lake and hitting up some of the rip rap would be a good option. Good thing I have three days of practice! Thanks
Might check out some of the rip rap on the bottom of peppin on the MN side for smallies. Otherwise I would fish around in the backwater and look for deep holes on creek bends. I have surprisingly caught them early on cut banks.
Feel free to PM me, will exchange ideas for Holcombe ideas
Fish have fins, they swim
What's the date of your tournament and how many boats are you expecting?
Originally Posted by bass-o-maticjm
April 24th. 30 boats
Might check out some of the rip rap on the bottom of peppin on the MN side for smallies. Otherwise I would fish around in the backwater and look for deep holes on creek bends. I have surprisingly caught them early on cut banks.
Feel free to PM me, will exchange ideas for Holcombe ideas
We can share some ideas. I'll shoot you a message soon.
Fish have fins, they swim
As a courtesy heads up, your club might want to look into this a little more from both a date perspective and MN permit requirement. The only tournament on the MN DNR site that has a permit for that date is a $250 entry MN BASS Federation tourney out of Wabasha.
Our permit is through the Wisconsin DNR. We are just using the boat landing. I don't know if that makes a difference or not as far as where you launch from. i'll give the leadership in my club the heads up though. Thanks for the info
Pretty sure it does make a difference and you'll need to launch and weigh-in in Wisconsin. That's why the WI based series' usually go out of Alma. Even then, just be prepared for plenty of additional company on the water.
I let the powers that be know. At a minimum I'm sure they will at least change landings.
Good luck in the tourney. Looking forward to seeing the video!
Estimated 50 boats. That's not bad for the river, especially considering they can lock.
Fish have fins, they swim
[QUOTE=PJ-Rohlf;12346000]Estimated 50 boats. That's not bad for the river, especially considering they can lock.[/QUOTE
Right, ours is technically 4 and 5. So with our 30 boats and their 50 its not terrible. Who knows. maybe we just move it down to 5a and 5.
Thanks you too. Looking forward to it!
Good luck in the tourney. Looking forward to seeing the video!
We will be launching out of pool 5 now. Still able to lock up to 4 though.
BRUTAL winds! How was the bite?
That it was for sure! We actually turned around heading down to Spring Lake. Unfortunately our bite was gone tournament day and we zeroed. Didn't catch a keeper all day. We had a pretty good practice and we were very confident going into the tournament. Tough pill to swallow but just got to move on to the next one.
About half of our filed zeroed. the winner had just under 17lbs. All largemouth. He locked up to 4.
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