I've been a little bothered by the fact that the rivers in my area seem to be barron shallow sandy wastelands the last month or so. I have a few small (very small) spots where I can get some Redhorse, but am looking for more variety. The main rivers within 30 minutes are:

Mississippi
Crow Wing
Pine

The Rum (Mouth) and the Platte are about an hour away.

I've never even caught any Carp in these rivers. These rivers seem to mainly consist of Redhorse, White Suckers (only in spring when running), and the usual Walleyes, Panfish, and Smallmouth Bass. Does anyone have any tips, ideas, suggestions as to what to try? Spots? Bait? I usually use a lightly weighted bottom rig with a piece or whole crawler. I want Carp, Buffalo, more Sucker species and more variety. All these species should live in these rivers, but are never seen or caught. I NEED HELP GUYS!

If you want to catch suckers in the Mississippi fish the tops of wing dams. The silvers are thick on those things.

No wing dams up here! The Mississippi is pretty much all natural except for the dam in Brainerd. I've caught a couple Channel Cats (nice ones) below that dam, but you can only fish it for a little bit and then they come down and kick you out! How come there's a lack of Carp and Buffalo? Don't they get north of the Little Falls dam or the Blanchard Dam?

You may have low numbers of these fish up there in general. Most of the fish you are talking about are going to be in the lower streches of the Mississippi in your area. You may have to just travel farther south, if action is tough...

I would work the Rum for more variety. There should be Carp in the Rum around the Milaca area, along with Greater Redhorse, which are really active this time of year. Also, the Rum has good White Suckers, Shortheads, Silvers and some Rivers.

I would check out the Nokasippi too, I've heard good things about it, if you can find deep enough water...Look for the deeper pools with good current seams, and fish the seam water....

Nokassippi is pretty low this time of year, it is pretty good in the spring high water though! I think I might have to try the Rum. We used to watch the Carp school up around the mouth to Mille Lacs, but I'm not sure of any spots to access the river. I guess I need to take some time to scout it out a little more. Thanks for the insight!

Big Mouth Buffalo according to my research have only been recorded as far north as Blanchard dam on the Mississippi in recent times. I know of one that was caught below the dam there. Little Rock lake which is connected to the river between Rice and Sartell has a population of B.M buffalo but gets hit by bowfishers as it is a popular bowfish spot.

Low water in rivers in my opinion is good and bad in my opinion. Good that fish are in predictable spots. Bad because it makes it tough to get from point a to point b by water.

Hey Dr. Flathead, how prevalant is the population of greaters in the upper rum? For example could you expect to catch one on an average day up there? Thanks for that info.

Carp Chaser wrote:

QUOTE:
Hey Dr. Flathead, how prevalant is the population of greaters in the upper rum? For example could you expect to catch one on an average day up there? Thanks for that info.

I've only caught one out of the Rum. I've probably fished that same spot where I got it 6 times since, and never got another. I do know they (DNR) sampled quite a few with the shockers between Cambridge and Isanti. Believe it or not, they were in higher numbers than Silver and Golden Redhorse in that area. This would be the best time of year to probably find good numbers of them...I have found them to be a good cold water target in some of my other Greater spots.

That is amazing, never would have guessed there were that many. Thanks for the info. We have done extremely well with the reghorse this fall so we should investigate this area.