Mississippi River today

I spent the morning on the Mississippi River at lake City jigging the marina docks and the breakwater. Things were pretty slow but then we had a hard blow coming from the Wisconsin shore upstream at a 45 degree angle. At 40 degrees and with that wind in the face, things were less than pleasant however we did manage some fish. The big one was a ten pound channel cat that thought my jig/plastic was tasty. One crappie taped up at just over 13 inches and a sunfish gave up over 9 inches. For the most part though the fish were smaller. Lots of sunfish in the 7 to 8 inch range. Just the one crappie.

Everything came deep today. If we weren't on 18 feet of water or more we couldn't buy a hit. A major cold front rolled thru last night and certainly wasn't a help to the cause.

Its a little early yet to get very nervous about a day like today, but in the end it was a nice day to be out and enjoying the fresh air.

hard to believe the weather up there is like it is and we have overnight lows in the mid 70's......that a good fisherman to catch fish the way you did today...NICE..

Locally there was some isolated areas of frost last night. I'm not ready for frost but I'd sure like to see our waters cool down a few degrees. We're way too warm here in the water department and we are super dry without much from the rain department. I think about 1/2" of rain over the course of a night, ten nights in a row, would do wonders on our lakes and rivers.

frost...wow...we won't see frost till maybe December or possibly Jan....we're having to fish the muddy waters of the main channels because of the hot water in the cuts and canals off the main channel...if only there was a way to send rain where we need it from places we don't need it...

CT

I don't fish down your way and tend to forget about going in that direction. BUT you did come to mind the other evening on one of our local city park lakes. Those pin minnows you talk about in the river showed up there in one massive school that I saw, easily 10' wide and 30' long, with all the little flashes all along it, all concentrated for the entire area. Something had a very, very successful spawning year! I couldn't find any active eaters around them though, which in that lake normally means that a muskie or two had moved in on the area, laid up and put the panfish down or back deep into cover. Even the local bluegills were in hiding instead of out and about.

We have definitely had killing frost this early some years that I can remember and it is easy to forget how very late spring was this year. This promises to be a short summer, and the equinox is just days away now. We have quite frequently had turnover this early, too, quite a number of times. Daylength is changing dramatically and the fish are adapting to that, if not yet completely to water temperature. Even the walleyes are starting to follow their fall patterns and are coming up relatively shallow in the evenings. After the water warms up going into summer, they move out and only start to come back shallow as the days shorten. They are doing that now to some degree.

No question that the crappies around here are starting to put on the fall feed bag, but only just starting and will stay that way as long as the water temperature stays up.

You did pretty well down at the Marina. We are getting some fish too, but having to work for them and not finding them concentrated at all or real active. Pretty much stragglers both deep and up on the weedline, it seems. It also almost ceases to amaze me when something like your channel cat takes a crappie offering any more. I had a carp do that to me the other evening, a big one, every bit as heavy as your cat. I call them bonus fish, something one is very likely to see in most crappie outings anymore. Tackle testers for sure. There are fewer of them when water temps are up, but they are showing up more and more now. Even the walleyes and the real lunker largemouths.

It isn't full fall pattern yet to be sure, but it has started and can only get more intense as autumn progresses.

We've still got way too much heat in the water for a fall pattern to emerge yet. The fish in the marinas are either resident fish or they are responding to the light changes you mention [available light]. On the lake side of the breakwater that creates this marina, the big masses of panfish haven't showed up on the deep rip-rap yet, but they are starting to show up on rip-rap at the foot of Lake Pepin.

I haven't seen any of the big shoals of pin minnows yet and they are one of the components that makes the marina such a hot spot. Get the water to cool down a bit more and those schools of tiny fish come off the main lake head for those marinas and lagoons where stable water temps keep them happy. Won't be long now what with this chilly stuff we have today. Just had another round of light rain, which is needed badly around here.

No question that fall patterns on our lakes are not yet in full swing. They have been heavily stressed by wildly fluctuating water levels for the past couple of years as we swing between drought and flood. One of the casualties seems to have been the stocked muskies, not gone but very strongly reduced, with very poor success this year for those who concentrate on them. About this time most years the muskie hunters and their big suckers start to show up on the docks, but there are a lot fewer of them this fall than in previous years. I am not crying a tear over that. Native pike have been more in evidence though, which to me is a good sign. The hammerhandles have been around more or less all summer, too, and in places and times that we have seen muskies before, but the big fall movement of the hens up out of the deeps has not yet begun. The native pike have persisted through the muskie stocking and seem to have come back into their own in the last couple of years, apparently handling wildly fluctuating lake levels better than the heavily stocked muskies have. Pike size has recovered to the point that 30" fish are not all that uncommon either, especially early and late in the year, and reports of high 30s fish are around, too. At least one of those was tape verified by myself. It is also my impression that the milfoil is starting to settle already too, and we are seeing increased presence of native cabbage in what used to be pure milfoil stands.

We were out in the wind and drizzle for a while last evening, but it was too cold and wet to really work the water. We managed a scant handful of smaller fish (crappies and a few small perch) from the dock shadow and the deep breaks along it. Color selection and tail size were vital as was position which had to be right on the breaks. Most fish came deep from slow jigging from the bottom up, actually little more than a very slow retrieve. The crappies seemed to require that the plastics come from below with the bite as they moved up through and then above the fish. Eventually we got too cold and tired; so we went home. Normally we get some attention on the drop and some directly on the bottom interspersed with layered sunny nibble, but none of those things happened last evening. Not a sunfish in evidence where they would normally be out and about.

We had misty rain and fog all night here last night. We will certainly take every drop we can get, but there just hasn't been enough of it this fall.

BTW down on the river we have been seeing schools of minnows, a lot of those minnows real tiny, on the surface pretty regularly for a while now. That is in one of the barge channels where there is no current except when a boat moves through the locks, not all that different from your marina, except a whole lot less boat traffic, even in summer. Not shoals of them but quite a few schools. IMO more than in previous years, same in the lakes. It looks to me like we are going into winter with a pretty strong forage base this year at least in some of our waters.

"BTW down on the river we have been seeing schools of minnows, a lot of those minnows real tiny, on the surface pretty regularly for a while now. That is in one of the barge channels where there is no current except when a boat moves through the locks, not all that different from your marina, except a whole lot less boat traffic, even in summer. Not shoals of them but quite a few schools. IMO more than in previous years, same in the lakes. It looks to me like we are going into winter with a pretty strong forage base this year at least in some of our waters".

Two things keep me going back to the marinas: first are the dock pilings, especially those that drop into 18 to 20 feet or more of water and, sailboat keels. Those keels offer some superb shade on days when the skies are high and the sun is bright. The keels also tend to get that scum and weed growth on them in late summer and the fish love to snoop for bugs in that stuff. I'll go floatless and swing drop a jig right on the shaded side and waterline of a spinach burner at the front of the craft and then stroll to the back so the jig runs right along the keel and deep. I keep a tight line doing this. I sure bang a lot of crappies doing this and many are those 14 and 15 inch mamas.

You should come down and meet me some morning Dutch. Lake City. Nice drive. I'll keep you up to snuff on the bite. If its later in October you might find yourself attached to a super sized walleye too. Last fall I got three that were at or over 10 pounds just fishing crappies.