"This will help ensure we have we have quality fish and wildlife resources in Pool 9 for a long time," Gritters said. "The Winneshiek has the look and feel of being on a remote Canadian getaway -- the best part is there's no place like home."

Last summer, most of the 100 touring bass pros and their 100 co-anglers who qualified for the $64,000 top prize made the cut for the money round in the FLW Outdoors qualifying tourney with sacks of fish pulled from the Winneshiek -- over 25 river miles from the tournament headquarters site in downtown LaCrosse.

Why would anybody want to burn that much fuel, time and negotiate passage through the lock & dam at Genoa which separates pools 8 and 9 when countless bass are swimming closer to the tourney site?

"Because waters of the Winneshiek are about as close to a sure thing as you're ever gonna find in professional bass fishing" touring pro Derek "Duke" Jenkel said. "There is no doubt you can pull a quick limit of fish heavy enough to weigh back in that crazy maze -- with the honest potential for a heavy 'kicker' bass which could mean big bucks. This is some of the richest bass cover I've ever seen. And I've fished some of the best waters in the entire United States."

Touring pro Chad Morgenthaler agreed. "The Winneshiek has it all: a variety of weeds, wood, deep water, shallow water -- the entire package," he said. "With such a target-rich environment the biggest challenge a tournament angler faces -- beyond navigating through the natural hazards -- is finding a pattern that will yield the biggest bass."

Morgenthaler fishes all 28 of the FLW tournaments held around the country each year, averaging about $300,000 for his efforts. Many of these events are held in southern states where fishing pressure on bass is intense.

"Iowa bass anglers can't imagine the treasure they have in the Winneshiek slough," Morgenthaler said. "The first time I experienced these waters pre-fishing for the FLW event I couldn't help feeling like a skinny fox invited for a sleep over in a coop full of fat chickens".

I had the opportunity to share the boat with Morgenthaler that day, taking a couple days off from work as a fishing guide on Pool 9. Chad has been a buddy for a dozen years. We hadn't fished together since the days when we were both professional firefighters. Previous outings were always on Chad's home waters down in Southern Illinois.

On lakes like Crab Orchard, Devil's Kitchen and Kinkaid, you can fish all day for just a half-dozen good bites. Although Chad worked hard to put us on fish he was considerably irritated with my whining about how much better the bass fishing was in northeast Iowa.

Last summer it was truly gratifying to sit in his boat with a told-you-so smirk as Chad set the hook on probably 30 bass -- half of which with dimensions worthy of tournament weight.

Time on the water with Morgenthaler and my old duck-huntin' buddy Duke Jenkel prior to the FLW event was a real eye-opener regarding new techniques, which Winneshiek bass probably hadn't seen much of prior to arrival of the touring pros.

The biggest epiphany came via a method Jenkel calls "punching." This entails Texas-rigging a multitentacled soft-plastic bait like the Sweet Beaver behind a 2-ounce bullet sinker. The heavy tungsten sinker "punches" easily through heavy carpets of foliage found in some nether reaches of the Winneshiek, allowing the plastic to tempt bass hunkered in the cooler water below the dense weeds.