Weekly Bass Reports

[serpent]

This has never happened to me before and probably never will but over the past 3 days I've caught 340 bass. Biggest was 20 1/2. I only fished from 5-10 am each morning. Completely amazing time at the in laws cabin. 

[Juan Grande]

Wow, sounds like awesome fishing Serpent.  Up north I assume?  

[serpent]

Yup it was up north.

[NELS-BELLS]

On 7/5/2016 at 3:31 PM, serpent said:

This has never happened to me before and probably never will but over the past 3 days I've caught 340 bass. Biggest was 20 1/2. I only fished from 5-10 am each morning. Completely amazing time at the in laws cabin. 

Thats assume!  Can you tell us what has been working the best, or the depth your finding the fish at?

Nels

[serpent]

I found the schools along the weed edge. Tubes and jigs worked the best. 9-13 ft. 

[bassfshin24]

Haven't made it out in 2 weeks!!! This is my longest streak since I took the boat out of storage in March. I have my first match of Minnesota Match Fishing (MMF) this Saturday. Pretty pumped to fish in this series. What I'm not pumped about is Seth Feider being in the bracket haha. 

[RuddyDuck]

I hear ya. About once a week for a bit here. Grad party this weekend, so not must fishing will be happening! Then after that hopefully I will get out a little more.

Sounds fun Serpent, you thumb must of been raw!

[rascal23]

Ha Ha!  Grad party here on Sat.  All the things that could and should have been done the last five years are getting done the last five days . First week without fishing since ice-out.  Back at it next week  -- with a much shorter hunny-do list.

[RuddyDuck]

Exxactly, everytihing I put off in the last year to go fishing, is now being done in a couple days! Keep the fish reports coming, so us guys can at least hear about some fish tales!

[bassfshin24]

Was finally able to get out this past weekend. Had my first match of MMF against Todd S. I barely squeaked by with the win. We fished Green Lake by Princeton and I had 5 that went 14.94lbs and Todd S had 5 that went 14.44lbs. We both decided to fish this lake since neither one of us had experience on it and we decided not to practice. I didn't have a fish in the boat in the first hour and a half but then found a group of fish by a clump of weeds and got my limit in 10 minutes. I lost two fish in a row on this spot and both were good fish and on the 3rd try I stuck my biggest at 3.77lbs. After that I upgraded once with a 3lber and maybe caught two more dinks the rest of the tourney. This is the type of lake that I struggle on in the summers. The water was stained and there was no real deep weed lines. Deepest weeds I found were maybe in 7ft of water. Couldn't find any milfoil on this lake and most of the weeds were some type of stringy grass. Most fish came on a trig brushhog with the big fish coming on a jig. I've heard this is a great lake but man we both struggled. Todd S definitely had better numbers and had big fish at 4.56lbs but said he couldn't get another kicker fish. It was definitely a fun format of fishing. Also lost 6 tungsten trigs and 2 jigworms to snakes. Ouch

Took my family out on the boat on a small local metro lake yesterday. Last year there was great deep milfoil but I think they jumped the gun this year and killed most weeds before they could even grow deep which was sad. Didn't fish too long but did end up find a spot with some deep weeds and had a 3lber break my jigworm and a 4lber break my 12lbs trig brush hog. Not a good couple days of loosing quality fish. Oh well. Can't wait to get back out there. 

[Juan Grande]

Great report Tony!  Do you fish all your t-rigs with 12 lb fluoro? I upped my rods to 15 lb this year and haven't broken off once. Check that, I have been bitten off once by a pike while fishing with Todd. 

I fished Saturday morning with a friend of mine.  We were on a 200 acre lake with stained water and heavy milfoil.  I was surprised that the milfoil edge seemed much less pronounced that it did a few weeks ago. I thought it would get thicker and even mat on the top as the summer went on, but doesn't seem to be the case.  

We ended up with approx. 30 bass with the biggest weighing in at 5 lbs 6 oz and measuring 20 1/2.  My buddy caught it on a weightless sluggo pulled through the milfoil.  I got some fish on swim jigs fishing the edge, but couldn't get anything on t-rigged pit bosses or worms.  Pulled out the frog around 8 am or so and got 7 fish on that. I probably should have tried throwing it right when we got there.  I'm really liking the Booyah Poppin Pad Crasher.  I have a great hook up ratio with it, it swims great and the fact that you can pause and pop it makes it very versatile.  The bait seems very durable too.

Here's a pic of the 5-6.

 

 

[bassfshin24]

I use 12lbs fluoro. I've been using it for years now and never had issues with break offs. I must have just had a bad spot in my line with the breakoff yesterday. The pike are just gonna break no matter what I feel like. I do really prefer the 12lbs for trig but might have to bumb up to 15lbs. 

[Craigums]

Sunday my buddy and I decided to drive 60 mins to scope out a lake, after much debate we decided to take his boat (we both wanted to fish out of our own). So I set my alarm at 5:30AM, Wake up at 5:00 to the sound of thunder and light rain. I grabbed my rain gear but wasnt to concerned because the previous evening I checked the hourly forecast and saw rain with only a slight chance of anything stronger until about 10am. So we hit the road, turns out the weather man was wrong:

We wait out the worst of it at the launch and finally put in the water around 9am. Launching was not easy as the ramp was super shallow, sandy, and the dock had blow to a 45* angle from a previous storm, We made due and I only ended up with some soggy sandals and wet ankles. We go to start the motor up and it's having trouble turning over. After 15 minutes of fussing with it, we finally get it going. We shoot across the lake to a few nice looking docks and my buddy lets me take the front of his boat while he reties. I pitch a few docks and feel a slight "tick" in my line, half heartedly set the hook and a 3.5+ bass comes screaming out towards the boat, I try to control him but I'm ultimately let down by my failed hookset. It shakes off, but I'm encouraged by the nice bite. We finish up the run of docks with no other action. Go to lift the trolling motor up and the cord breaks, we have to use pliers to trigger the release to finally lift the motor. At this point the Wind is blowing pretty hard so we decide to run a couple miles east into the "river" to escape it, Once we get all the way in we realize we are now fighting high winds AND current. We work our way into a little cove and once it gets to shallow to proceed we decide to crank up the big motor and check out a new area, as my buddy is trying to pull an Austin Powers and get out of this little area I realize something is wrong as he is not able to turn the motor to the right, it's stuck facing slightly to the left. So at this point with no ability to go straight with the big motor we just decide to give up and head back. Problem is we are ~3miles from the launch and are now fighting 16MPH+ winds and current, I realize we aren't going to have enough battery life to troll all the way back. After some discussion we decide our best course of action is to have me on the trolling motor and him on the big motor, He can run the big motor for 15 or so yards before the bow is facing the shoreline to our left, at this time he goes into idle and I use the trolling motor to point the bow to the opposite shoreline, and we repeat the process about 70 times until we finally make it back. By the end of our outing we had caught zero fish and our GPS trail showed 60-70 half circles and short spikes all the way back to the ramp. Being on the bow the whole time I am completely soaked since we speared several waves when I was trying to straighten the bow for another run  :'(

It was a tough trip, but I feel even worse for my buddy who is going to have whats probably going to be an expensive repair to fix his steering.  :'(
 

Edited July 12, 2016 by Craigums

[bassfshin24]

Ouch!

[Duffman]

I love those types of adventures!

*chuckle*

Fun to read, thanks.

[Fisherman45]

I guess you know who's boat you will be taking next time. I hate when that stuff happens. We broke a live well pump connection last weekend and filled the boat up with water quite a ways before the bilge pump went off and made us scramble for the launch.

 

[Todd S.]

I guess snapping a rod in half on a hook set and getting beat by Tony this past weekend wasn't all that bad compared to your outing Craig

 

[Craigums]

3 hours ago, Todd S. said:

I guess snapping a rod in half on a hook set and getting beat by Tony this past weekend wasn't all that bad compared to your outing Craig

 

Haha, you win some and you lose some. I'm getting back in the saddle tomorrow night hoping to change my luck

[RuddyDuck]

I guess that is a true test of the statement, 'A bad day of fishing, beats a good day at work.'. Better luck next time.

I had better luck that morning. I woke up to that storm and went, 'whew, I'm glad we took the tents down right after the grad party!'. Then went back to sleep.

Edited July 13, 2016 by RuddyDuck

[RuddyDuck]

Finally made it out last night. Didn't catch much, one 13in dink and got bit twice on the foot by a big deer fly!! Dang it .  No motor trouble though.

[rascal23]

Got out wed.  Fished a lake I know much better for muskie, not so much for bass. We started shallow (and protected). After a couple hours fishing docks with pads in between, with just a couple fish and few blow-ups, we figured on braving the wind and fishing some weed bars and humps.  Some of the spots we wanted to fish were nearly too windy to fish except with crankbaits.  We found a few weedlines, humps and bars with coontail where we were able to scratch up 6-8 "keepers" on a mix of jigs, jig/worm and t-rigged craw. Throw in another 1/2 dozen decent northerns and considering the wind, better than a poke in the eye.  Oh yeah, did I mention it was windy? 

[Craigums]

I also got out Wednesday and have a similar report as rascal23. Due to the wind I tried to stick to protected areas, got a few blow ups on frogs but couldn't connect. Finally tried fishing some rocks in 18fow, Got a nice one on a jig and 2 more on a grub. The deeper stuff was difficult to fish with the wind

[RuddyDuck]

Made it out this weekend up north in the Akeley/Walker area. I like old fashion pad fsihing.  Was struggling a bit and then got 4 decent ones in about 20mins. All came off the deep edge of the pads with a Jungle jig and pit boss chunk. Had to cast into the pads and reel it to the edge and then drop it. If I casted to just the edge, I never got bit. Thought bass were dumb?? Biggest two were 4-12 and 4-4.Even got some mowing and chores done!

in between the fishing!

[Todd S.]

really struggled this past weekend. Fished  3 lakes within an hour of the metro for about 20 hours total, only caught 16 fish, not one over 3lbs. I was the bug this weekend and not the windshield. 

[serpent]

I agree with Todd s.  I fished 2 lakes and caught 30.