By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor
For the third straight time, the Mississippi River Elite Series, based in La Crosse, Wis., was won in Pool 8.
Despite strong efforts from those who scoured Pool 7 (Seth Feider) and battered a sweet spot in Pool 9 (Alton Jones), Ott DeFoe’s combined current and punching patterns were enough to outlast the field and claim his first full-field Elite Series win.
The Mississippi didn’t disappoint in any regard. Anglers reported 40- to 60-fish days and the ability to catch them just about any way imaginable – the place just sounds like a flat-out fun place to fish. Constantly changing conditions – things started fairly stable, then a deluge in practice led to rising water throughout the tournament – were something everybody had to adjust to. Some spots held up for the duration while others needed a rest to reload.
Here’s a recap of how the rest of the top 5 took care of business in Wisconsin.
2nd: Seth Feider
> Day 1: 5, 13-01
> Day 2: 5, 19-05
> Day 3: 5, 16-09
> Day 4: 5, 13-08
> Total = 20, 62-07
When Seth Feider got up on stage after weighing 13-01 on day 1 last week, he invited the dark, stormy weather that was due to hit La Crosse the following day. That way, he said, he could go target a big bag of smallmouth.
He was a man of his word and his game plan to focus on the brown bass paid off a best career-best finish in the Elite Series that lifted him 19 spots in the points and made him the last man into the Angler of the Year championship, which starts tomorrow at Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota.
What’d you learn this week about your ability to compete at this level?
“It was definitely a confidence booster,” he said. “If this tournament didn’t go well, I was on verge of not being there next year. There have been times when I doubted whether I should be here.”
He proved himself amidst constantly changing conditions on the river, employing the same sort of strategies he uses when fishing Pools 4 and 5 of the Mississippi at home in Minnesota.
“It was different every single day,” he said. “The river is never the same two days in a row. It’s either higher or lower or cleaner or dirtier. That’s why you can’t get too attached to anything. I caught big ones on different spots every day.”
Coming into the tournament, Feider pinned a lot of his hopes on Pool 7’s history of producing comparably bigger bags of smallmouth than Pools 8 or 9. He also knew going to 7 meant locking up and back each day and that had to be factored in to his thinking.
The cloudy conditions in practice allowed him to comb the edges of grass patches with a swimjig. He said the water, which was getting dirtier in some areas, stayed cleaner along the edges longer. That was his method for covering water.
By the end of the first day of practice, he was committed to Pool 7 for the tournament. He spent the afternoons practicing in Pool 8 to allow for locking back from 7. He had located smallmouths in Pool 7 and had largemouths in 8. He also threw a frog and wound up weighing in one frog fish Thursday. His other search bait was a Storm Chug Bug.
“I’d go down current seams and sand drops,” he said. “I didn’t care if I caught what bit. I just wanted to see if they were big. As soon as I’d get a bite, I’d leave. I didn’t know if it was a sweet spot, but I knew the seams had potential. I fished ones that didn’t have big ones and I tried to find as many spots as I could. That’s the deal on the river. It’s pretty rare to win off one spot. Most of the time, you’ll have 30 juicy spots and you’re running around between them.”
His only regret was scrapping his smallmouth strategy too soon on Thursday in favor of a largemouth pattern.
“Aside from lost fish, I would’ve committed to smallmouth earlier,” he said. “Halfway through day 1, I had a limit of 2 1/2-pound smallies and I bailed mid morning and went to salvage the day by fishing for largemouth. I wasn’t laying up, either, because I thought I could catch 15 pounds of largemouth. If I had committed fully to smallies on day 1, I would’ve won.”
The focal point of his game plan was sand bars where he could cast a swimjig or Carolina rig across it or along the side and get bites that way.
“I was fishing on the same current seams,” he said. “Sometimes, they wanted a swimjig. Sometimes it was a Carolina rig. I’d make 20 casts with one, then change and catch one. Depending on the drops, most of the fish came right on the break. Some of the bars topped out in 18 inches of water.”
> Swimjig gear: 8’ medium-heavy Daiwa AGS casting rod, Daiwa Zillion SV casting reel (7.1:1 ratio), 17-pound Sufix Castable Invisiline fluorocarbon line, 1/4-oz. Outkast Tackle pro swimjig (white), 4” Daiwa swimbait trailer (white).
> Carolina rig gear: 8’ heavy-action Daiwa AGS casting rod, same reel, same line, 1/2-oz. VMC tungsten worm weight, same line (leader), 3/0 VMC EWG worm hook, unnamed soft-plastic craw (green-pumpkin).
> Feider dipped the pinchers of the green-pumpkin craws in orange dye.
> He also mixed in a dropshot, which produced two 3-pounders during the tournament.
> Main factor in his success – “My confidence had a lot to do with it. Just being familiar with the pattern and knowing what I had to do win. That’s how you catch a big bag on that river. Whenever there’s a tournament there and someone catches a big bag, it’s typically smallies. Rarely people catch 17 pounds of largemouth.”
> Performance edge – “I had all of my stuff to myself and the HydroWave was a key for me. I always run that when I’m smallmouth fishing on the power pattern. Also, my Atlas jack plate was a big deal when moving around in that shallow water.”
Alton Jones mined one spot in Pool 9 all four days to earn a Top-3 finish.
3rd: Alton Jones
> Day 1: 5, 14-11
> Day 2: 5, 15-12
> Day 3: 5, 16-08
> Day 4: 5, 14-15
> Total = 20, 61-14
The spot that produced Alton Jones’ best finish of the season was an area he’d found during the June 2012 Elite Series visit to the Mississippi. He never got a bite on it back then, but he kept it in the back of his mind for this event because of how the area set up.
“It was just textbook for if we ever came back at a different time of the year,” he said.
It was the third spot he checked on the first day of practice and it wound up producing all of his weight last week, a rarity on the Mississippi.
“All of the fish came off one cast essentially,” he said.
The spot was in Pool 9 and required Jones to run about 10 miles further to the south than anyone else in the field.
“I always have more confidence when I’m not fishing around a crowd,” he said. “I knew fishing would be as productive as Pool 8. It worked out. I also don’t particularly like to lock because it’s another potential pitfall, but when I found what I found on day 1 of practice, I was committed and spent my whole practice there.”
The sweet spot was a hard, high spot in amongst some grass. The top of the rock pile was in 2 feet of water and it dropped off to 7 or 8 feet on the edges. He alternated between a jig and two Texas-rigged soft plastics throughout the event.
“The water came up over the grass and bent the grass over,” he said. “It was the only hard structure for the fish to get behind.”
He’d position his boat down current from the key area and cast up past it and let the current wash his bait to the fish.
“It’s a textbook river technique,” he added. “It was really fun since there was a mix of smallmouth and largemouth there.”
> Jig gear: 6’9” medium-heavy Kistler Z-Bone casting rod, unnamed casting reel, 30-pound unnamed braided line, 20-pound unnamed fluorocarbon line (five-foot leader), 1/2-oz. Booyah jig (various colors), YUM Christie Craw trailer (matching colors).
> His color assortment for the jig and craw combo included green-pumpkin, black/blue, black/brown and chartreuse.
> Soft stickbait gear: Same rod, same reel, same line, 3/16-oz. unnamed tungsten worm weight, 4/0 Gambler KO hook, 6” YUM Dinger (green-pumpkin purple flake).
> Craw gear: Same rod, same reel, same line, same weight (1/4 oz.), same hook (3/0), YUM Christie Critter (same color).
> Both the Dinger and Christie Critter were Texas-rigged.
> Main factor in his success – “Finding that spot early on day 1 of practice and committing myself and my time to Pool 9.”
> Performance edge – “My Skeeter FX and Yamaha SHO 250 – they’re really valuable tools when you’re making those long runs. I was running 60 miles before I made a cast and I could make that run care free.”
For Jordan Lee, the regular season ended with four straight top-10 finishes.
4th: Jordan Lee
> Day 1: 5, 17-02
> Day 2: 5, 16-02
> Day 3: 5, 14-10
> Day 4: 5, 13-10
> Total = 20, 61-08
Having not been to the Upper Mississippi before, Jordan Lee figured the safe play would be to find something that suited his style. Rather than trying to locate areas where fish were biting a swim jig and then another area where a different bait was preferred, he slung a frog around some lily pads and duckweed in Pool 8.
He acknowledged his spots were starting to fade on the weekend and his weight dropped off each day following a 17-02 start on day 1, but he managed to scratch out enough to notch the second-highest finish of his brief Elite Series career.
“I think I did pretty good as far as trying different places,” he said. “I stuck with my game plan. That’s the smartest thing I could’ve done. I felt like I had the bites to maybe win if I could’ve landed everything that bit. When you’re frogging that doesn’t happen. I felt like was doing the right thing for me. It was a lot of fun.”
The area he wound up fishing during the tournament was uncovered on the final day of practice.
“A couple key places were lily pads with duckweed blown in on them,” he said. “They were sitting on little current breaks – on a point or turn in the mouths of the chutes. Those pads were key. It was real specific. They weren’t anywhere else. Some of the cuts the water would be 5 or 6 feet and others it 1 feet. I had to learn them all.
“Another key was it was hollow underneath the pads. There were places where there was so much duck weed on top of the eelgrass that I figured out they weren’t on that. With eelgrass, fish don’t use it and get under it and can’t move around in it. I think that’s one mistake guys made. They’d see it and it looked good, but they didn’t know fish don’t use it.”
He expanded his search on day 1 of the event after bagging a good limit and found several more spots that paid off the rest of the way.
“I did more of the same Friday and looked for new water, but it was hard to find anything else,” he added.
The frog proved to be most effective at catching quality fish. He tried flipping the same areas as a follow-up technique, but he only caught non-keepers that way.
“I never could get a good bite flipping where I’d get them on a frog,” he said. “Ninety percent of the time on the frog, it was a 2 1/2- to 3-pounder. Every fish that would eat it was solid. The bigger ones seemed to be more surface oriented.”
> Frog gear: 7’3” heavy-action Quantum Tour PT prototype casting rod, Quantum Smoke HD casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 65-pound Seaguar Smackdown braided line, Strike King KVD Sexy Frog (copper frog).
> Main factor in his success – “Probably being patient and practicing during the tournament. I had to because I didn’t have a lot going on. Once I got clued in that first morning, it allowed me to go find some new fish. I knew that would be the key for me – having as many places as I could. I figured I’d run out as good as some of those places were.”
> Performance edge – “I really relied on my Power-Poles because the current was pushing me around. With those, I got to fish those spots thoroughly. Also, my Atlas jack plate was key. Some of those places I ran out of were a lot shallower than I should’ve have been running. One chute less than a foot so it helped me get through some real shallow water.”
Skeet Reese employed a two-bait approach that resulted in his second Top-5 of the season.
5th: Skeet Reese
> Day 1: 5, 13-08
> Day 2: 5, 14-11
> Day 3: 5, 15-01
> Day 4: 5, 14-01
> Total = 20, 58-05
Editor’s note: Information for this report was gathered from Reese’s appearance on stage on day 4 of the tournament and from recap videos posted on his social media pages.
After scrambling on day 1, Skeet Reese settled into a rhythm with a one-two combo of a swimjig and Carolina rig, much like Feider. With his top-5 finish, Reese moved up high enough in the points standings to clinch a berth in next year’s Bassmaster Classic.
He’d started in Pool 9, but rising water chased him back to Pool 8 where he got dialed in on the swimjig/Carolina rig pattern.
“I did almost all of my practice with one bait – a swimjig – to find schools of fish positioned in the grass,” he said. “I was looking for areas where the current was pushing up onto sand and harder bottom. Then there’d be a grass line.
“Those fish would sit right in front of the grass with the current hitting it. Most everything I found was in 2 to 5 feet of water. I just covered a lot of water.”
Once he’d locate a group of fish with the swimjig, he’d comb the area with a Carolina-rigged lizard.
“I sat on one school (Sunday) and caught 30 fish out of it,” he said. “When you get them, it’s fun.”
> Swimjig gear: 7’ medium-action Wright & McGill Skeet S-Curve casting rod, Wright & McGill Victory 2 casting reel (6.3:1 ratio), Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon line, Lethal Weapon 2 swimjig (pearl blue), unnamed trailer.
> Carolina rig gear: 7’6” medium-action Wright & McGill Skeet Victory Pro Carbon casting rod, same reel, 20-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon line, 3/4-oz. unnamed sinker, 12-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon line (leader), 4/0 Lazer TroKar worm hook, 6” Berkley Havoc Boss Dog (green-pumpkin).
> He said color selection wasn’t a big part of the equation.
“It didn’t matter,” he said. “Once you found the school and got them fired up, if it was green-pumpkin, you could throw it out there and they’d eat it. That part was fun. I caught probably close to 200 fish this week. That’s amazing. It’s not every week you can do that.”
