Wow. I'm not sure I've ever seen that much current. Fishing the main river was not an option for all day. With the trolling motor maxed out, I could BARELY gain on the current. It was insane.

Anyway..... As you might have guessed, the water was muddy. Not awful muddy, but heavy stain. Floaters everywhere. It didn't rain on me Sunday which was nice. All the creeks I checked were packed with bait. I assume this was an effort to stay out of the river current. I saw some fish chasing and even had some surface activity with shad getting blown up. I managed to catch a couple of largemouth on shad type baits all of them were shallow and white as white can be.

Gonna fish Friday before the tournament. Plan on focusing in on the offshore sandbar deal although I'm not sure where any of that is or how to fish it! Water temps on main river were 52ish. Pockets off the main river were 54-56ish. The creeks I checked were 60 at the back. I flipped a TON of grass (mostly hyacinth). NADA. I worked some laydowns and bushes with spinnerbaits and jigs. NADA. I feel like even with all this warm weather and water that these fish just haven't made it to the creeks yet.

squre bill and traps onthe sand bars.

The bars I know are all the way down at the lock. River channel in front of them, maybe 5ft on top of them, and 15-20 ft deep behind them. They run parallel to the river if I remember right. Those are what I'm looking for?

I believe if the main river is fishable your gonna be better off with a heavy jig on bluff walls fishing the current breaks. If it’s just not feasible to try to fish the main river your best bet is to work the slough mouths with your boat on the inside out of the current. You can about pick your bait if you locate the fish, but something heavy so you can get some bottom contact or a trap or deeper running crank. I have seen some extremely nice largemouth come from the sloughs on crankbaits this time of year as well, but they are gonna be few and far between. It can be tough, but the weather is in your favor if the river ain’t out of the banks.

As sloughfoot mentioned pay attention to the breaks when the water is up and current is strong. If you found the baitfish in the sloughs thats where i would have been spending a good bit of my time. Its hard to say right now with the mild weather we are having and high waters and strong current. Your guess would be about as good as mine.

You may find some in the back of the flats and creeks off the main river if there are any. Especially with the current. They don’t always stay deep all winter and with the warming water in the backs of those creeks, they wanting to come there anyway.i have found them to be very aggressive even in 48 degree water. It helps to have some vegetation in there as well.