During practice for the final BASS Elite Series regular season event on the Mississippi River, Classic Bass tagged along with Bill Lowen
Lowen started his day flipping shallow wood on back channels. He found success early with this pattern with 3-4 solid bites.
Bill quickly figured out that bass were holding on shallower wood that had current on it, but not too much current. The main channel was too quick while the back channels seemed to have just the right amount of flow. He was a bit surprised to see the depth that most fish were holding in. Just 1-2 feet of water.
Lowen with a fat little river bass early in the day caught flipping.
As the day advanced, Bill bounced around to a variety of spots which included the spillway that would eventually give up several fish to tournament champ, Ott DeFoe.
In the afternoon, Bill really dialed in a pattern that was producing several bites. He went back to his shallow flipping pattern but this time he focused on grass cut banks with current. The fish weren’t giants but he experienced a stretch that was basically producing as many bites as he wanted. Bill felt confident that this pattern would produce a limit of bass.
He tinkered a bit with bait selection but his confidence lure was definitely a smaller craw/creature style bait fished on fairly light tungsten.
The Mississippi wasn’t as kind to Lowen as he had hoped come tournament time but Bill still says that the river is one of his favorite places to fish in the entire country. With endless structure, visual targets and other places for bass to hide, it’s certainly a search to find the right fish!
