Back On The River Chasing Smallies!

Howdy everyone, I'm back at it again. It's the big weekend here in Minnesota. It's opening weekend of fishing season. We can now legally fish for pike, walleye, and bass. So today I'm out here at the river. We're going to try for my favorite species, smallmouth bass. I was a little bit concerned about how the rivers would look here in Minnesota. I know the usual one that I fish in North Dakota is completely blown out right now. We've had a ton of rain this spring. I did walk down there, it doesn't look terrible. It's flowing a little bit fast, so I don't think I'm going to launch my kayak at this spot. But that's all right, we're going to stop at a few different places today. So I am going to grab a couple rods, walk down there, and try to catch my first smallie of the year though. So I'm going to toss the hat cam on, we'll head down there and check it out. All right, so I grabbed two rods on my spinning rod. I've got a Nikko Craw on a little Z-Man jig head. On my casting rod I've got the Whopper Plopper tied on. Maybe wishful thinking. I'm not sure if they're going to be hitting top water quite this early in the year. If I had to guess, I'd say the water temp is probably about 55 out here right now. So yeah, it doesn't look terrible. It's definitely a foot or two higher than normal, but the water's not super murky or anything. A lot of years by mid-May, which it is now, there'll be some nests fanned out along the shoreline here, but we had kind of late spring this year. Oh, there's a smallie right there in front of me. I'll get my shadow down. The shadow of my head was pretty much right in front of him there. He might have saw me. That's a good sign that there's a bass. There are a whole bunch of carp down there, but there is one smallie right in the middle of them there. Yeah, they're probably starting to stage up, getting ready to move up here and start fanning out some beds. Kind of looked like that carp there was about to take my jig for a second. All right, we'll walk down here to this point. Set my rod right there where it's not going to get stepped on, hopefully. Toss one. Oh, there's a nice smallie right there. Yeah, we've got some nice ones roaming around up here. Hopefully, we can catch one. There's a lot of big carp up here. I kind of want to throw this Nikko craw right in front of that smallie. Oh, he might have saw me. He's skedaddling. We'll drop that craw down there anyway. See if we can get him to change his mind. He just charged up and looked at my craw. It's almost like he's starting to get protective of his nest area over here. Lots of big old carp swimming around out here. There's a fish. I thought I felt the bite that first throw. I think I was just hung up on something. As soon as I got my jig free, this fish came over and dumped it. Come here, bud. Look at that. First smallie of the year. Heck yeah. Not a monster, but I will take it. It's a pretty fish. We'll let that one go and see if we can find a bigger one. You know what? I might give it a couple casts with that Whopper Plopper. It's just bugging me in the back of my mind, wondering if they're hitting top water. Well, I've given it about 20 minutes since I caught that first fish. I know there's one more. He's kind of circling around in front of me that looked a little bit bigger, but he doesn't seem all that eager to bite. Must be just waiting to find a mate or something. We're getting to be that time where they're going to probably start fanning out beds within the next week here, so he might have that on his mind more than eating right now. Oh, there he is right there, right down there. We're going to give it one more shot at this fish. I got my craw right in front of his face. No excuse to not eat that craw. No thanks, he said. Well, at least we caught the one here. Caught my first smallie of the year. Got rid of the skunk for the day. I think I'm going to grab my rods and we'll head to the next spot. I'll see you guys there. A couple smallies right there. So there is a bed fanned out right over there. Aren't any fish sitting on it. There was two sitting kind of right out in front there, so I'm guessing that they're just getting into that spawn mode. I threw my craw over there, the one looked at it, but he didn't pick it up. I don't know, they might have making babies on their mind right now. I can see there is another bed fanned out a little bit farther down there, so it might be kind of a tough bite today. Looks like these fish are just getting ready to go on the beds. There's a nice smallie right down there off those rocks. He sees my craw. Either that or he saw me. He's like, I'm getting the heck out of here. Yeah, that's probably what happened. All right, I made it here to spot number three. Hopefully, we find a few willing to bite here because it's been kind of a lack of action so far today. We are going to take the kayak out and paddle that around, so that should help increase our chances of finding them. Let's get out there and we'll see if we can catch a few at this spot. Off we go. So at that last spot that I stopped at, it definitely seemed like those smallies were staging up, getting ready to spawn. So I'm going to assume that same pattern is going on here. So I'm going to go fish some of these areas where I've found them on beds in the past. I'd imagine they should be not too far from those spots. Hopefully, we can get out of the wind a little bit. It is supposed to start really picking up now, so that might limit the spots that we can fish. But there's this little shallow area back here, which right now the water's actually up probably a foot higher than normal. So I think we've got a good chance of finding something back there. That looks like a good spot right there. Come on, big old smallie. Come on out and blast that plopper. Oh, I thought that was a fish. I sure felt like a fish at first. That's how long it's been since I caught a big one. I forgot what a fish feels like. Nice big smallie right up ahead. Oh, maybe I spooked that one. Might have got a little bit too close. It's got to be a little bit warmer up here. Maybe I should be working some of the shallow stuff with the lopper plopper. All right, working my way upriver. Getting out of that wind a little bit. Hopefully we can find some fish up here too. This looks like it'd be worth a try. We've got some water flowing in here. Had enough rain this spring, there'll probably be water flowing in here all summer long. Hopefully there's a smallie up here. About ready to catch my first one on this stretch. Oh yeah, there's one. It feels nice too. It feels really nice. If this is a smallie, it's a big one. Oh, it is. We're gonna hit the brakes in case he's got some friends up there. Wow, look at that. Nice fat smallie. Now that is what I was looking for. Yeah, I threw that Nikko Craw up there underneath that flowing water. This guy absolutely clobbered it. All right, first real quality fish of the day. Took a little while to find them out here, but a fish like that definitely makes up for it. Well, I gave it a few more casts here and haven't been bit, so maybe it was just that one fish up there. Yeah, I'm gonna pull up the anchor. We'll keep moving. I actually attempted to paddle up here just to see if I see anything else. We'll go take a quick peek. Yeah, there's actually a nice deep hole up here. Big school of minnows. That's probably why that one smallie was up here. Not much else for big fish though. We'll keep looking for them. Hey, got one. A little painted turtle. Third catch of the day. All right, he's hissing at me. We'll set him free. A bunch of dust clouds. Looks like it's nothing but carp back here. Yeah, there's one. I was half expecting to at least find a pike or something back here, but looking like it's just a whole lot of carp. A bunch of little minnows over here. Could be a little pike back here. It's not what I'm looking for, but hey, it's some action. As slow as it's been today, I will take a pike and I will be happy with it. He's pretty beat up looking. At least I got my jig in a good spot there. Looks like he just got done spawning or another pike tried to take a bite out of him or something. All right, third fish we've caught today. What is that now? Three fish, one turtle. All right, I didn't see anything in there on the way upstream. There were a couple of nice smallies sitting right inside this little cove right here though. We're going to go take a quick peek, even if they're in here. I doubt we're going to get these ones to bite because they look like two of them just kind of flirting with each other. There they are right up in front of me. Then there's a bed fanned out. Oh, there they go. Let that sit there for a second. I got to get my plopper put away before I break my rod tip on a tree branch or something. So there's a bed fanned out right over there in that corner, which I'm pretty sure is from one of these two fish right here. See, we've got two of them swimming around right there. I think what's going on is these fish are just more concerned with starting spawn here in the next day or two. They're just not really looking to eat because I've seen this probably a dozen times today now. I haven't had any luck getting any of those fish to bite. It seems to be the mood that most of these smallies are in out here today, which is unfortunate, but hey, we caught a couple. Two smallies, one pike. Yeah, no complaints out of me. I've definitely had worse opening weekends. Weather is decent enough to get out. I'm usually pretty happy. We're going to try that drain over there where I caught that one though before we paddle back to the truck. Maybe that same fish will be back there willing to bite again or a different one will be there. I'm going to All right, come on. Another big dump would be real nice. I thought I felt something there. That might have just been my jig bumping over some rocks though. Now that sun's back though, I should be able to see. Get that up there just a little bit farther. Meant to right there. We'll toss back up there again. There we go. That's the spot right there. There we go. Oh, I was going to say this feels like the same fish, but it is definitely a different fish because it is a different species. Well, I really wasn't expecting to catch any largemouth out here on the river today, but I will take that. Nice bonus catch. I just love watching them swim away in this clear water. All right, you guys, I think that's going to do it for today's trip. That wind is really starting to pick up and it's only supposed to get worse, so I'm going to start paddling my way back to my truck. I did come back over here to the spot where those two big smallies were pretty much swimming circles over here, right off to the side of that fanned out bed. I figured I'd come try throwing the wacky worm at them, but not even that worm would get those fish to bite. So they are not really in the eating kind of mood today. I'm pretty sure they're going to start spawning in the next day or two, so those bass probably have making babies on their mind more than looking for their next meal. But we found a few willing to bite. A couple of smallies, one real nice one, bonus largemouth, bonus pike, bonus painted turtle even. So all in all, for opener weekend, it wasn't too bad of a day. I've had much worse openers than that. We didn't get skunked and I had a lot of fun out here. So I hope you guys enjoyed it too. Thanks for coming along with me again. I'll see you next time.