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My brother-in-law and I headed out on the Mississippi river on the morning of July 4th. It was going to be real hot and we were having a big cookout in the afternoon, so we decided to fish till around 11am.  He had never been fishing out on the big river before, so I was hoping to show him some good fishing.  Unfortunately this is a bad time of year to really get on some good fish.

We found the shad and had plenty of good sized bait for the morning.  We didn’t do very well with catching decent fish though.  I let him catch all the fish but it ended up only being 2.  Both of them were in the 5lb range and they were both scraped & somewhat bloody.  Apparently the spawn has been a little rough on them.  We had a couple other good hits but they never fully committed.

It was a pretty day out and we had a nice breeze, so we didn’t bake.  I’m overly ready to start catching some nice cats.  These 5 lbers are killing me.  Thanks James Paul for the fun day on the river!

Shane

My brother-in-law strains himself to hold up the "lunker" of the day!

Tony and I headed out again yesterday afternoon (July 2nd).  It was a beautiful evening.  The side channel where I normally catch my shad was really warm.  Water temp was 88 degrees.  After a few casts, I figured I needed to find some cooler water.   The tributary nearby was 6 degrees cooler.  That’s where we found them.  We caught about 18 shad which proved to be plenty for the evening.

Just like my last trip, I missed the big fish.  He bobbed the pole a couple times and started down with it.  I grabbed it too soon.  I apparently need to work on my patience   The next fish I was VERY patient with.  He wasn’t able, however, to do much with it.  He was a beautfiul flathead but only weighed around 2 lbs.

We were fishing down a revetment bank and our next spot resulted in a 4lb channel cat.  Tony was unable to get any good bites on his side of the boat.  I ended the evening on a sour note by catching a Drum

Hopefully my patience will pay off on the next trip.  I’ll be glad when the spawn is over and we can get back to some better fish.  Right now I’ll blame the spawn for my lack of fish, LOL.

Happy Fishing!

Shane