I've been watching the Flw website and they've mentioned people worrying about locking because of barge traffic. I've never fished anywhere with a lock. Could someone education me on the issues the barges are creating with the locks?

Barges get priority thru the locks, if bass boats are there waiting...they have to keep waiting until the barge locks thru.

Does this process take a long time or something?

Seems like we locked though with a Barge in the Red River once but I may be mistaken. It wasn't a big deal if I recall. Now if you couldn't get in the lock and had to wait that might get ya.

Fishing Rivers with locks is a whole other game. River fishing is a whole other game without locks.

Locks operate on a schedule in regards to them opening etc. If you are there in line waiting to lock you can get bumped nd have to wait if barge or other commercial vessels show up. Actually locking itself can take just a few minutes to half an hour or depending on the size of the lock etc.

locks on the upper Miss open and close on demand or at least they did a few years ago when I traveled down that river....towboats have priority over bass/pleasure boats and if you approach a lock while a towboat is locking through,it can take up to two hours before you can enter the lock....sometimes lock operators will work with a large tourney operation and reserve a certain time each day for bass boats to lock through...
typical lock time when I traveled the upper river was about 20 minutes if the lock gate was open and I was the only boat in the lock...also most locks on upper river only raise or lower you 10-12 ft so doesn't take as long to empty or fill the lock...