Last week, I had the chance to do some filming on the Rainy River with Larry Smith of Larry Smith Outdoors.  We started out for a couple of hours one evening and finished up the following morning.  The intent was to show off how throughout the year, there is good fishing to be had in the river.  Certainly, some seasons are better than others, but there is always something happening in the river if you look for it.  This trip was no different.

The Rainy River fishing started out with some casting in a bay and adjacent river shoreline at the mouth of the bay.  Larry was casting mainly a Mepp’s inline spinner, looking for some good pike.  I was using a lure I have really come to love for casting for pike and bass.  It is bladed jig with a paddle tail, otherwise called a VibraMaX jig.

We had fun, but really only produced some very average sized pike.  In one of the bays, there was a couple using slip bobbers and leeches and they caught a few nice smallmouth.  We knew of a 44 inch pike caught days before in the bay but with just average success, the next morning we were going to chance things up a bit.

We hit the water the next morning at about 6:30am, before most as the Wheeler’s Point boat ramp was quite empty.  This day, we decided to do some casting initially and then pull spinners and crawlers.

We started casting the same lures along some resort docks in the river along with the edge of the river channel where the Rainy River flows into Four Mile Bay.  There is a big area the extends not only into Four Mile Bay, but on the edge where the shallow water at about 5 feet starts getting deeper as it goes into the river channel.  This edge, combined with patches of vegetation and reeds make up some great cover to go casting.  Talk about fun.

We started out with a few nice smallmouth and a couple of small pike.  Actually, a very good start.  We then decided to transition into pulling spinners and crawlers on the edge of the river channel.  We focused at about 7 – 15 feet.

Let’s just say we had some really good multispecies action.  We caught some nice walleyes and saugers.  It wasn’t by any stretch a slamfest, but I will tell you, we were picking up fish quick enough to put together an eventual limit if that is what we were after.

We also caught some pike, nice smallmouth bass and three big crappies, all pulling a spinner and crawler.  Larry was using a hammered gold with some orange and glow white on it.  I was using a pink #4 Colorado spinner blade with a two hook harness.  We both made sure to pinch off the long tail of the crawler so there was only a couple of inches off the back hook.

With a TV show in the bag on the river, we decided to go up river and pull spinners in an area that some of Larry’s friends back in WI like to fish.  There really wasn’t much structure or anything special to this spot.  We pulled spinners along the bank in about 15 – 22 feet of water and caught walleyes.  Again, it wasn’t hot and heavy, but we were scratching out some decent fish.  If we would have spun on some areas, we may have caught even more, but we kept pulling down the shoreline as much to experiment as anything.

The bottom line, fishing the Rainy River in mid August catching a very nice bag of fish.  The question I think about, if there are that many fish in the river now, how will things be when the traditionally good month of September and October roll around?  River anglers, the future looks bright!

 

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