NOW HEAR THIS -  NOW HEAR THIS -  *EMERGENCY!!!* GO FISHING NOW!!

Like always I’ve been spending lots of time on the Mississippi river at Lansing IA and Marquette IA fishing for and catching tons of bass. With the water temperature in the upper 60’s the bass are up shallow ( 2 foot or less ) and feeding. The weeds are just getting a good start with the majority of them still under the surface. This is the perfect situation to throw a spinnerbait, swimjig or lipless crankbait over the top of the submerged weeds and through the scattered weeds that have made it to the surface.

I’ve also been catching an occasional walleye while fishing in the shallows along with a bunch of northern pike. The northerns have been running a bit small - 4 pounds on down - and don’t pay very well in a bass tournament but are still a lot of fun to catch.

There are also lots of bass on wood cover, with shallow wood in slight current producing the best. I recently won a 2 day tournament out of Prairie Du Chien with 10 bass that weighed just over 34 pounds and they were all caught pitching tube baits or jigs to wood in current.

As for the color of the spinnerbaits, swimjigs and crankbaits, if the water has less than 18 inches of visibility then I throw black baits and if the water is cleaner than this I throw white or white and chartreuse combination. Dark colors like brown, black or black/blue combinations are working great for the jigs and soft plastics in all water clarities.

The Mississippi is a big river but don’t let it intimidate you, the fish are not that hard to find especially right now. If you are more of a lake person then I recommend Brushy creek located just off of highway 20 a few miles west of Webster city. Robert Smith, a friend of mine from New Hartford, recently spent a couple of days at Brushy and reports that the water is slightly dirtier than normal but the fish are biting great. The bass are biting dark colored texas rigged tube baits worked slow in 3 to 6 feet of water. Crappies are shallow, getting ready to spawn; many of them are suspended 1 to 3 feet under the surface in the branches of the large trees in the middle of the creek arms hitting small jigs like Terry’s Rock hopper or my favorite the Ballsy jig.

Robert also reports that the muskies are biting very well. He caught several of them while bass fishing in 3 to 5 feet of water, what a bonus to a great day of bass fishing!

The walleyes are also biting with the best action being at the dam on crankbaits that dive up to 6 feet deep. Cast the crankbaits shallow and retrieve them slowly along the rocky face of the dam, when the crankbait hits bottom stop for a second then continue the retrieve, reel to fast and you will continually be snagged in the rocks. If you don’t want to travel to go fishing then the lakes around Waterloo like Brinker, Big woods and the Mitchell pits seem to be a better choice than the Cedar River right now. The spring time shallow water bite is in full swing and will continue to be good state wide for several more weeks, so now is the time to go fishing!!!! Until next time keep your lure wet!