This week’s BASS Elite Series takes us to the upper Mississippi River so let’s look at the BASS Mississippi River Rumble smallmouth factor. The tournament will launch in the area of La Crosse, WI at Veteran’s Freedom Park.
If you look at this map, you can see that this is a tournament that will have a combination of river and backwater fishing. This is where it becomes unclear how much smallmouth fishing will effect the results of the tournament.
BASS Mississippi River Rumble Smallmouth
Coming off three reservoir tournaments, the latter two of which were deep bites, Elite pros will be fishing shallow again on the upper Mississippi River. In fact, they’ll be in backwaters, just like – you guessed it – this year’s Bassmaster Classic on the Red River.
This week, the world’s best bass fishermen will be seeking out clearer water in backwaters, and they will be on a fishery where many tournaments have been won on top, notably with frogs. The one big difference from the Red River: smallmouths. Main river brown fish probably won’t win the tournament, but they could factor in it if – and it’s a big if – the water’s not too muddy.
This is where knowledge of a fishery comes in; shoreline, in almost all cases, equates to a backwater here. So backwaters are by far the most successful places to finish high in upper Miss tournaments – more than 80 percent of the time. Backwaters also mean largemouths more than smallies, which mean heavier weights, which means wins. Source
In addition to the information above, check this out:
The quality of the Mississippi fishery out of La Crosse is so high that the Elite field should have a wide choice of spots, he said.
“There are a lot of lakes and tons of aquatic vegetation,” he said. “There’s so much backwater, a guy will be able to do anything he wants to if we hit it (the water level) right.”
The tournament waters stretch 66 miles, measured roughly from Dam 6 near Trempealeau, Wis., south to Dam 9 near Lynxville, Wis. The boundaries encompass three pools, 7-9. The takeoff point at La Crosse is within Pool 8.
McCaghren said that because the water levels didn’t appear to be drastically different from pool to pool, locking through should not eat up too much competition time and thus could be a feasible game plan. And the bite in all three pools looked promising when he scouted them, he added. Source
It will be interesting to see how BASS Mississippi River Rumble smallmouth bass impact the final results and the $100,000 winnings!
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