Well as most of you had guessed, rubbers were the winner of yesterdays bass challenge. Ted hauled in 5 or 6, 4 of which were in the 16-18" range. Top water only drew a few bumps no massive strikes as I was hoping for. The two small bass I caught were on rubbers as well. Was excellent weather for being out on the water thats for sure. Had a blast! Onto the pictures!
Good times for sure! The numbers from 6/24/12 Plastics (Ted): 12", 16 3/4", 16 3/4" 18 1/8" Top Water (Paul): goose egg Plastics (Paul): 12 1/4", 10"ish
Is your plan to fish I am stoked, I hope to be fishing the next 5 weekends in a row! It has been a bad year for fishing for me. The lake looks low, so I should be able to get my boat under the bridge to my "hot" fishing spot. I haven't been able to fish it for over a year!
Where is your lake? I'd be really surprised if it were low - most of the lakes that my colleagues and friends have cabins on are up 4" - 3FEET! There were boats and crap floating all over the place. Oh, the plan for Bass is to start shallow- pitching plastics into pockets in the weeds, then move to the weed edge and fish plastics on Texas rigs SLOW. Then we'll pull or troll rattling cranks outside of the weed edge fairly slow, then fast if none of those have worked. once we have two 16"+ Bass in the boat, move to Pike. Start slow with weighted stick baits outside of the weed edge fishing 4' down in 7-8' of water (yes the weeds stop at 7' in this lake right now). Then pull jointed rattling shads along the weed edge at 1.5-2mph. Then move to a secret Northern technique that I'll post tomorrow. I haven't tried it for a few years and I think it might be the ticket tonight. I will also pitch a couple good size Musky baits that have worked on this lake in the past.
Yeah, most of the lakes are WAY up. My buddie's cabin saw eleven-inches of rain. Considering it is about 28,000 gallons per acre for an inch of rain - that's 308,000 gallons of water. Superior is up 4" right now. If you took those 4" of water, you could empty lake Mille Lacs and fill it one-and-one-half times.
Yesterday at Calhoun, I caught a 5lbs 3 ounce and within the next few cast, I caught a 5lbs 13ounces. Too bad my phone died so no pics.
Sun and Wed, skunk out on Minnetonka! threw everything in our arsenal, and fished 5-6 bays/ 5-6 sunken islands! tonka is hard! gotta try something them bass ain't never seen or set up like walleye rig. i think these bass are too smart! forget the shores or docks, there's nothing there. anyone have any secretes to catch these finicky bass? not to mention it's high traffic use and hundreds of bass tournaments.
What side of the lake are you on? I've always done well out there pitching plastics under docs and boats. We took 5th out of 18 boats last night with two Bass. Couldn't find the Pike last night.
on sunday we tried along the west bays all the way up to cook bay and back down to excelsior bay, we took 4 under 2# along deep weed edge about 20yds from shore and docks, Wed we just stayed north on cooks bay working flats, long points and caught nothing, though my 10# mono snap on a huge pike.
no sold the canoe, saving up for a jon. we rode my buddy's 16' crestliner with a 5 blade 135 merc, hitting close to 46mph and hitting our ass hard on the seat!
that's pretty nice! how many total pounds? was this on Wed? I threw yamoto wacky rig and lizard, while buddy threw DT, crawfish trailers, black and blue and pumkin, this is my 1st time out on minnetonka on a boat, and tried my original smaller lake tactics, that didn't work
Went out yesterday. Casting and trolling. All the northern were about the same size.... which is typical for my lake. Most of my success was from my new Rapala Cackle N Wrap lipless green crank. My cousin was tossing storm lure swim baits.
Yep, we fished last week Wednesday - the 27th and ended up with 5.2lbs for us total. Yeah, pitch plastics under boats and docs next time if you want Bass out there. I'm yet to be schooled by a friend of mine on how to fish deep water Bass well. I've pitched drop shots and jigs-n-pigs but haven't had a whole lot of luck.
any suggestion on nice over night rivers to fish? 20 or so miles outside the metro? was thinking bout heading out tonight for walleyes or cats. some that i know of; orono dam/elk river, st.croix/stillwater/hudson, anoka dam, i like some kind of light post for attracting bait fish at night and deep pool dam. pitch a fire, drink and fish, gotta alot of beer, swing on by
skunk out at anoka dam but fish out $35 worth of lures! yeah! these were all tangled in a bunch of spider line! not too rusty, just algae, with a little boat wash soap and some lub, a few new hooks, good as new!
Well this weekend was interesting for fishing. I went out 5am – 9:30am with Bro on Saturday. We tried everything with very little luck. We started out the morning tossing brush hogs and a Rapala walk the dog top water around docks, stumps. The water was glass so I couldn’t resist some top water action. With top water failing I switched it up to a brush hog and fished the stumps (it is a bay with a sunken forest, there are stumps everywhere). Still no love after 20 - 30 minutes... I switched to some Rapala DTs then Storm Perch Swimbaits. I think that is where I picked up a red eye (rock bass). I think by this time Bro had one or two bass. We gave up on docks and stumps and fished pads and reeds. My Scum Fog was less than productive, I think Bro was tossing a worm. At this point it was like 8am and we had very little activity. We decided to troll the deeper weed lines, I put on a Rapala DT16… still no love. Then we fished 30ft as a last resort. At 9:30am we turned in for some beer instead. Sunday I went out and tried trolling the deeper weed lines on my lake. Casting wasn’t an option as my dogs and wife were in the boat and required some sort of wind…. LOL No love @ 10ft, 16ft or 30ft. Anyone have luck this weekend?
A few channel cats, good eating though, and the fight is always good. a few flukes here and there, nothing to brag about
We took 6th (out of 18 boats) last night (limits: 4 Pike, 1 Musky per person) and pulled big fish for the night - a 31 1/2" Pike. We weighed 14.65lbs - the winning bag was 20# even. We were pulling DT20's in 20-25' of water outside of points - at ~2.5mph. I think we pulled 18-20 fish total last night. good times. Oh, and the boat is finally VERY close to running perfectly. It starts (usually with a little throttle help) and runs smooth and well. I got it up to 22 on a glass lake and 16-17 last night in the "Minnetonka Chop" which was substantial at times. Good enough for me and my little 16' Lund.
nice going! I was hitting 28 - 29 mph in my Lund Rebel on Lake of the Woods this week with 2 guys, I can hit 33 if it's just me. Fishing was really slow up there, a bunch of weather systems moved through while I was there. We raised probably 30 muskies over 3 days and had a couple decent ones on (I lost one when it snapped my spinner bait in half - it was a bass sized spinner though, the fish weren't going after big lures) and only boated 3 dinky ones. Got a lot of pike and smallies though, couple walleyes out of the weeds at dusk too.
Nice what motor do you have on your lund? I bought a 1988 16' Lund Rebel earlier this summer with a 40hp Mariner non-tiller setup. I dont have a speedometer but I'm quite sure I'm around 30mph with 2 guys + in the boat. Very happy with the setup with the roughly estimated 1,250 lb dryweight setup. The previous owner built a rear casting deck and replaced the greentreated wood and carpet 4 years ago - I will have this boat for a long time,
I'm actually selling my rebel if anyone is interested http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/boa/3178353501.html
hey Ted are there any good local fishing forums I should list this on? I use lake statestatefishing.com sometimes but it's a little slow over there. Need to dump this thing before I get my new boat! Lund Predator 1810 SS is at the top of the list. I just wish Lund didn't package with Mercury...
Hey Carl! Unfortunately not. I don't go onto fishing sites/forums very often at all. Sorry. That Lund Predator isn't going to suck... damn.