Biffle Wins Elite Series on Mississippi River

Tommy Biffle brought the final day’s biggest limit to the scale to overtake Aaron Martens and win the Mississippi River Elite Series event out of La Crosse, Wis. While most of the field frogged and flipped their way to high finishes, Biffle again broke out his not-so-secret bait on the Wisconsin smallmouth to win the event by more than 2 pounds.

“I didn’t like where I fished last year when we were here,” Biffle said. “I tried to fish two pools last year. This year I decided I would pick a pool and figure out how to catch them in that pool. I find this spot in practice by pitching a Gene Larew Biffle Bug up on a point and caught one. I backed off picked up a baffle bug and a hard head. And there was a current seam coming around a point of an island. There was a ditch that ran along that current seam.

“I went over there to flip the bushes on that island because they looked so good and while I was going over there to flip and pitched my Biffle Bug up on the point and caught a 3 1/2-pound smallmouth. I did not intend to fish for smallmouth. But I backed off and cast into that ditch and caught 18 1/2 pounds in about 15 minutes. So I knew I had me at least one spot.

“This morning I ran up there first thing and stayed until about 9:30 am and it wasn’t happening. So I ran to a spot that I had found in practice that was similar but I hadn’t caught one off yet. It was every cast there.”

Biffle caught a bunch of fish flipping bushes, wood, willows and more hard cover. But it was the magic smallmouth holes with current with his Hard Head and Biffle Bug, that has now accounted for 5 victories for the seasoned pro, that ended up being the winning deal.

Here’s how the rest of the top 12 finished up: