The Mississippi River continues on a slow fall. The stage today at Natchez is 29 feet.

The most productive stage for catching sac-a-lait from the Old Rivers is 28 feet. At that level the top of the old dead snags will start to show above the water line.

For weeks now the local fishermen and ladies have been catching the perch just outside the flooded green willows. That’s where the dead timber is located.

You can locate the perch around these laydowns as well. Always check any green willow trees that are laid over.

The perch usually hang out off the deep end of the laydowns.

The bream will be a bit shallower, sometimes. Most of the bream fishermen and ladies are catching limits of big red ear and bluegill fishing back in the flooded willows in 5 to 8 feet of water.

Regardless of where you’re fishing keep your bait just off the bottom to avoid the small fish.

Needless to say it’s hot, but if you can stay on the water you can catch fish from the Old Rivers at Deer Park, Vidalia and Yucatan.

The bass fishing was on and off this past week.

Again the Old Rivers offer the best opportunity to have a good day of bass fishing.

For big fish try cranking Bomber Fat Free Shad or Bagley DB3 crank baits over the points and down the bluffs.

One cast across a point won’t cut it. Make multipe casts to the same area.

Try to make the big crank bait crash into something. When you feel the crank bait crawling over something run the lure over the object and stop your retrieve for a few seconds. I’m not sure why this works but it does.

I guess it’s like a bream or shad doing a face plant into a log or rock pile. This triggers a reaction strike, sometimes.

If the crank bait bite is off, slow down some more and try Carolina rigging a big 10 inch plastic worm or a Zoom Brush Hawg in the same area.

Heavy jigs with big bulky plastic trailers will catch the big old river bass too. If size does not matter and you’re looking for numbers, just scale the soft plastic lures down to something like a Zoom Baby Brush Hawg or a 6 to 7 inch plastic worm.

Red shad is the color that seems to produce for a lot of people. Black grape soft plastics with red metal flake is an old time, Old River color that’s responsible for the demise of many bass over the past years.

Again, I am not sure why the color black grape works since nothing that swims in the water is that color, but it produces.

When the Old River bass are hungry, color is not an issue. It’s more about location than color.

Like I’ve said many times, you can’t catch what is not there.

If the forecast holds up, the slow fall coming down river will continue for the next five days. That’s a good thing.

As long as we have a slow fall, the water quality and clarity will remain good throughout the rest of the summer.

The Old Rivers are at their best during the fall season when surface waters began to cool off. The fish will move up on the banks and will be much easier to locate and catch.

Reports from the land-locked lakes like Concordia, St. John and Bruin continue to slow.

The bass bait here is limited to the early morning hours and night fishing. By the mid-September that will change as the landlocked lakes come alive when the water cools off.