Once active smallmouths are located, plastics will catch more fish, simply because they can be presented with more finesse to tempt those fish which aren’t aggressively feeding.

Plastics are available in a number of configurations, some of the more productive of which look like nothing that has ever swum the Mississippi. My favorite plastic is the Chompers skirted hula grub, but there are days that see tubes, Senko variations, flukes and other plastics catch more fish.

As is the case with other lures, color is secondary to bait profile. On northern river pools, camo, blue/fleck and motor/oil fleck are popular choices; downstream, green pumpkin and chartreuse pumpkin/pepper has an edge.

When smallmouths are in the mood for plastics, and clients are in the boat, heated competition between anglers throwing a green pumpkin Chomper behind a Mert Wolf “Brush Bug” and somebody else pitching a chartreuse pumpkin-pepper Senko-style bait rigged wacky-worm style usually develops.

Downstream from Dubuque -- according to veteran local guide Rudy Morgan -- smallmouth bass are considered a bonus species, although fishing can be “predictably good” around the rocks below the dam at Bellevue on Pool 13 and tailwaters of the Pool 14 dam at Clinton early in the summer.

“Fishing for smallies should continue to improve over the next few years,” he said, “especially on Pool 13. The key is hard-bottomed areas and clean water. Considerable habitat improvement in the form of riprapping on Pool 13 and the growing menace of zebra mussels are combining to grow the smallmouth population beyond bonus status . . . but it will still be a few years before this neck of the river can be considered a good smallmouth fishery.”

Wing dams and closing dams from the old Savanna Army Depot north on pool 13 hold some nice smallmouth bass.

Every one of these rocky structures has a “sweet spot” that tends to draw more fish. Some wing dams have a gap of several feet at some point along their span, which is essentially at a 90-degree angle to the main channel. This gap creates a mini-habitat, which funnels forage, providing a great ambush point for smallmouths.

Riprap is never placed with NASA precision. Some wing dams have what local anglers call a “Friday rockpile,” where a load of rocks is dropped slightly off-kilter, resulting in a “knob” on the face of the wing dam. This habitat anomaly has the potential for holding smallies all around the structure, with exact location driven by both current and forage base. One such wing dam exists across from the tall sandbank on the old Depot grounds on Pool 13.

Before I pulled my knee-shaking 8-pounder from Pool 9 a couple of years ago, my previous personal best had been a Pool 13 fish that I tempted from this wing dam while I was fishing with veteran Sherrill guide Jimmie Oberfoell.

Jimmie, who held the boat perfectly in current out from the end of this wing dam, told me to pitch my chartreuse Luhr-Jensen Hot Lips crankbait toward a boiling swirl a short cast in from the end of the wing dam.