Mississippi Smallmouth
Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 9:52PM 
Just finished up with a week on the Mississippi River on pool 4 and 5 for the St. Jude/Dick Hiley benefit tourney. The format for this event is a team format so good friend Chris Luedtke and I teamed up to try and take down the big bass on the river. We practiced for 3 days and found some really good fish and good areas. We felt like we were on enough to get a solid top 10 finish, if not win. These two smallies were one of many doubles that we had through out the week. We found most the fish either trying to spawn or staged on there way to spawn with a few post spawn fish biting as well. In layman terms, the fish were in all stages of the spawn. :)
SMB's were not the only fish we were after or catching. We also spent many hours locating the LMB's and found some giants. Chris flipped up this toad on the 2nd day of practice. Most of our fish, either species, came on a smoke colored tub jig either flipped to shallow cover or thrown out in a current break.
This was the mouth to one of our top back water sloughs from last year. I was very disappointed to see the lay downs that had floated in during this spring high water. If you have ever met me you know that I am very determined and this small log jam was not going to keep me out of the winning area. I proceeded to tow the logs one at a time with a rope. Chris thought I had lost my mind.... There was a reason we brought a chain saw and I was going to put it to use. After many hours of working to clear this area to get back in there I had to finally give up. There were a few trees that were too big and heavy and would not move. I need a barge with some big equipment, not a ranger bass boat with a chain saw and rope! ;) It was fun trying.
As for the tourney. We finished the first day in 12th place and felt pretty good about our chances. We weighed 6 fish for 16.77 and caught about 40 keeper smallmouth. Day 2 brought much different conditions and we ended up only weighing 5 fish for 11.87 and falling out of check contention. As for the fundraising. The 70 teams of anglers raised $131,000 for the St. Jude Childrens Hospital. I would call that a success. :)
Matt Peters
A short clip showing how nasty the mouth of one of our best spots (in past years) was. The log jams were big and lots of them. But that wasn't the worst thing....the worst thing was the mosquitoes! They were trying to carry me off.
Lake Waconia
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