Pulling hefty bass out of this heavy salad requires tackle with considerable backbone. Jenkel prefers a 7 1/2-foot G. Loomis flippin' stick and a baitcaster spooled with 50-pound test Berkley FireLine crystal.

The tungsten bullet weight he employs are denser than lead, enabling a smaller diameter sinker. A downside is the price -- about $6 a sinker. No major expense when chasing bass down on the Okeechobee in Florida when punching first gained favor. There are no toothy northern pike down on the Okeechobee -- but plenty in the Winneshiek.

Dukester was considerably annoyed by my unmitigated glee over his loss of $18 worth of sinkers to pike in the vast weedbed above the Cold Springs boat launch on the Wisconsin side of the river in a mere 15 minutes.

A couple hours later we were fishing several miles up-river in side cuts near the Lansing power plant. Some weather had blown in, with a light rain kicking bass feeding activity into overdrive.

All the commotion of bass boiling on the surface goaded us into switching over to hollow plastic rats, which can be extremely effective when skittered across duckweed.

Duke had me down four bass to one, explaining that the disparity of our catch rate could be attributed to the superior action of his $8 Rojas hollow plastic frog. Pike liked the Rojas frog better too.

Rojas frogs: $16. Tungsten weights $18. Watching Duke whine like a little girl: Priceless.

"Signature" lures may have an edge over generic baits when bass fishing. Maybe because anglers tend to work baits they believe in with a little more enthusiasm. When it comes to hollow plastic rats and tandem spinnerbaits the pike and structure factors combine to make use of generics a lesser financial headache when fishing the Winneshiek.

Bassing success here doesn't require a footlocker-sized tackle box. You can be a serious player -- at least if pike don't interfere -- with $10 worth of tackle that would fit in a paper lunch sack.

With fish settled into summer feeding patterns it doesn't take much time to figure out their feeding attitude. Location is driven more by river stage than prevailing local weather conditions.

During the mid-day period under a bright sky bass tend to tuck closer to cover under stable river conditions. This is especially true when fishing deeper weed beds. The water clarity changes between the downstream edge of a major vegetation plot and the outside edge where filtering action of the weeds has less impact is nothing short of remarkable.

Under normal summer conditions visibility in channels and running sloughs of the Winneshiek is typically 18 inches to three feet. However, if you can maneuver back into deep water edges of canals that snake through major weed beds, it is often possible to see the river bottom in over 8 feet of water between the weeds.

Many anglers come to the river with the preconceived notion that this water is discolored to the point where chartreuse or some obnoxious fluorescent color is the best choice for tempting bass.