The Mississippi River is still holding at a good level for fishing the Old Rivers at Deer Park, Yucatan and Vidalia.

Local fishermen and ladies are enjoying some very nice weather and catching fish. The river stage at Natchez today is 23.1 feet with a very slight rise coming downriver. That’s a good thing.

When the river is more or less stable the fish you locate now should not move. I noticed a lot of the white perch fishermen are drift fishing off-shore for the big slab perch.

Just use your sonar unit to locate the shad and drift through the bait with jigs or jigs tipped with a live shiner and you’ll find the perch. Drift fishing jigs and minnows over the deeper water is a good way to catch the perch, but don’t rule out the willow stumps and logs in the shallows.

The visible cover may only be 2 to 5 feet deep but cooler water temperatures will keep some fish shallow. The bass in the Old Rivers are holding near the shallow visible cover.

You can catch the bass on an assortment of lures. Small spinner baits and shallow diving crank baits are my favorites. These lures allow you to cover a lot of water and make repeated cast to the same cover. While covering a lot of water keep an eye out for bait fish.

Locate a stretch of water with stumps, logs and baitfish and you’ll find the bass and white perch. Then best reports on big bass are coming from the Natchez State Park and Lake Bruin. In fact if you’re looking for trophy bass the little State Park lake offers us the best opportunity for a bass over seven pounds.

A visiting angler friend of mine recently boated 3 bass over 5 pounds and one over seven from the park lake. This small 250-acre lake used to receive a lot of local fishing pressure.

The lake still holds the status of producing the current Mississippi state record bass that weighed over 18 pounds. That was back in the early 1990s. At that time the lake was full of coon tail moss beds.

The moss held large schools of baitfish and the bass had plenty to eat. The state made the decision to try to remove or control the moss by introducing grass carp. That was a very bad mistake.

The grass carp did their job too well. All the moss was gone within a year and the big bass, the fish that weighed over 10 pounds, disappeared with the moss.

For the most part many locals quit fishing the park. The grass carp are still there and the moss is still gone but there are still a few big bass in the lake. While 10-pound fish are rare 6-to 7-pound fish are common. Who knows?

There may be another 18-plus pound record fish in the Natchez State park. Try surface lures early and late. When the sun gets up try fishing the creek channels in 15 to 20 feet of water with soft plastics and heavy jigs.

You never know. There could be a 20-pound bass in this little lake.

Eddie Roberts writes a weekly fishing column for The Democrat. He can be reached at fishingwitheddie@bellsouth.net.