Metro Lets Results Big Marine

[Dennis Steele]

Here are the results for Big Marine
1)Bill/Marty 19.9
2)Trouble Hooks 18.4
3)Jighead 11.2
4)Scott/Doug 11.0
5)Sam/fishhead 10.6
6)Carpsnaggers 10.0
7)Lance/Rob 9.7
8)Walleye Whackers 8.3
9)Balsam Lake Bandits 5.9
10)Neises 5.7
11)Luckyfish 4.5
12)Team Hogg 3.7
Big Fish goes to Scott/Doug for a 3.2lb Pike

Over All Standings
1)Sam/fishhead 43 (80.2 lbs)
2)Bill/Marty 43 (36.3 lbs)
3)Walleye Wackers 43 (35.5 lbs)
4)Jighead 40
5)Trouble Hooks 39 (32.5 lbs)
6)Lance/Rob 39 (23 lbs)
7)Scott 36
8)Balsam Lake Bandits 33
9)Carpsnaggers 27
10)Neises 26
11)Lucky 17
12)Team Hogg 8

At this time ties were broken by seasons cumulative points.

[This message has been edited by Dennis Steele (edited 06-30-2003).]

[Paul Waldowski]

Dennis,

Do you have any kind of recap of the day? Who did what? and caught what? Just wondering

------------------
Paul
[email protected]

[Lunker]

The Balsam Lake Bandits had their worst standings yet, too bad. The bite wasn't bad for us in certain areas, just finding legal fish was hard. Weighed in 1 pike, 1 bass, and 3 gills. We caught more than a dozen bass all about 11", 4-5 pike about 18-19", and some little gills. Bass all came off white senkos off docks, and pike on spinnerbaits around the weeds. Always off by about an inch. Oh well, nice day, no problems, and a definitley less painful than prior!

Those burgers afterwards were dam good as well. Good to see you all again, and time to get ready for waconia. Well, in a couple weeks maybe.

[Aquaman01]

Team Carpsnaggers got everything off spinnerbaits in bullrushes, spinnerbaits in lilypads, spinnerbaits in those big leafy weeds with thick stalks, and spinnerbaits over dying weeds. Big white spinnerbaits and smaller yellow spinnerbaits. 2 northerns & 3 bass. Couldn't get a sunny over 6.5" Spinnerbaits, spinnerbaits, spinnerbaits spinnerbaits. I always thought they were a big pain in the tackle box and couldn't really see myself whipping one of those hunks of clunky metal around, but I know better now.

Our productive strategy was all Mistermom's. His pace covered lotza watuh. My armz is sore.

Had fun and looking forward to Waconia!

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Aquaman
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Peace and Fishes

[wastewaterguru]

Team Trouble Hooks had our limit of bass and two 21 or 22" northerns before lunch. Caught 5 more legal bass and one more snake after lunch. We had 11 bass in the livewell at 4 and I could barely tell the difference between any of them. All between 12 and 16 inches.

We caught almost all of our bass on wacky rigged Zoom trick worms, or Texas rigged powerbaits. Got a couple bass on spinnerbaits and one on topwater.

I got a little sunburnt......OK maybe a lot.

Tightened the bolts on my trolling motor bracket when I got home last night.

[Guest]

Congrats to Bill and Marty for a big weight on a pretty tough bite!

We stunk it up (Walleye Wackers) - only weighed in 3 bass and a pike.. We also got a lot of 19-19.5" pike, seems to be quite the population under the legal 20" length. Also quite a few short bass. The bass bite was off for us compared to our time out on the lake last week, but that's fishing... Looking back, we should have switched it to panfish in the afternoon, but oh well...

I didn't get a chance to see all of the weigh in, so I'd be interested in hearing what was weighed in from some of the other teams and presenatations that worked.

We got the majority of fish on plastic worms worked very slow - mostly deeper water.

[This message has been edited by fishnAddict (edited 06-30-2003).]

[Guest]

Wastewater, how did you guys ending up doing in that first area? Looks like we both had the same idea for #1 spots, we decided to vacate since about 10 other boats had the same idea and we didn't really feel like playing bumper boats... Maybe should have stuck it out, as #2 spot didn't produce for us. I think we only pulled 1 keeper from that first area... Good job by the way on the bass - that may have been the only bass limit weighed in (didn't see all of the weigh in)?

[mistermom]

I think the winning team Bill/Marty did well real shallow. That's what Aqua wanted to do. I couldn't really do it because I wasn't rigged with heavy enough line to fish in the slop. So we fished edges because I could fish them. Walleye guys don't use 60lb power pro..... but I better start.

mm (carpsnaggers)

[wastewaterguru]

We got all of our keepers in the morning along the west shoreline fishing the docks and inside weed line. I was fishing with 8 pound mono and a sixteenth ounce split shot or no weight at all with the plastics using an Eagle claw hook with the spring weed guard. We got the bigger fish under the docks....I was skipping my baits 10 or 15 feet under the docks and pontoons. Pulled a couple of fish over dock supports and boat lifts. Green pumpkin was the only color we caught any fish on. I tried six or seven other colors including white, chartruese, purple, orange pumpkin, and smoke and kept going back to the green pumpkin. The "skipping" weightless worms techniuque is ideal for lakes where the docks cross the inside weedline. The docks block the sunlight and creat pockets in the weeds. A center hooked "wacky", weightless worm (Zoom trick worm and senkos both do this....hook 90 degrees to worm at the egg sac) will fall horizontally very slow to the bottom and you watch the slack in your line for indications of a strike. If you don't get a bite on the way down (30 seconds or so......which seems like a long time) then you give a twitch or two and let it sit for another 15 seconds or so. Then bail out and cast again. Some guys will do the twitch and wait thing all the way back to the boat, but 90 percent of the strikes I was getting were on the initial fall. This is a very slow technique and works in deeper water as well. That's when I added the sixteenth ounce splitshot, to help get it down and to give a little weight to overcome the breeze blowing the line.

Plenty of time to drink beer with this technique(or smoke cigarettes). Anyone who wants to learn how to fish this way, give me a call and we can go hit Prior or Waconia some weeknight.

[This message has been edited by wastewaterguru (edited 06-30-2003).]

[Guest]

We had a fun day out on the water. I was a little worried since we were at a wedding the night before and didn't go to bed until 3 am. We tried fishing the bull rushes on the eastern arm but there were a alot of boats and the wind wanted to blow us into the bay. We got our three legal pike from 23 in to 25 in. drifting and casting spinnerbaits about 500 yards out from the eastern shoreline in the east arm. We also got two legal bass an a bunch of hammer handles. That bite slowed by about 10:00. So we began to target sunnies. On thursday we found some dandies in the north end not far from the launch. We had to weed through a lot of small ones but we got quite a few pig pumpkinseeds. We were sight fishing them. We could see them up by their beds in 1 to 4 feet of water. We got some small bass doing this as well but none 12 inches. We were hoping to join you guys aftewards for burgers but were too exhausted. Looking forward to seeing you all again at waconia.

Team Bill/Marty

[Grabs]

What was big fish?

[wounded minnow]

We found some crappies on the west side of the island in about 10-12' of water. We caught a couple of northerns dragging a wally diver in about 25' along the west shoreline and a green rattle trap in the entrance of the east arm. The weeds were kind of a hassle most of the day. I like to throw a spinnerbait, and we had some sucess, but I was constsantly getting hung up. I'd, of course, like to remind all of you to tighten your mounts on your trolling motor. Failing to do so may lead to binge drinking. Hope to see you all at Waconia.

[Jonesin4eyes]

We started our morning with the crowd on the east arm fishing the weed point - had no luck, not even a bite and decided to try a bay on the west side. We picked up one bass and a couple pike (one over 20) on a black spinner bait. The bass was very shallow, the pike was deeper by some a small patch of rushes. After weighting those we tried pulling crankbaits by the deep point going into the east arm and picked up one more pike over 20 on a blue deep Thunderstick jr. Keeping with the deep water we moved to the deep shoreline at the far end of the east arm and picked up another pike under 20 se we decided to move back to the bay on the west side. Picked up one more Pike over 20 and then worked the west shoreline back to the north looking for bass. Picked up a real nice one pitching a pumpkin seed tube jig at shorelines/docks. Surprised that we had enough wieght for third - after seeing some of those bass brought in by teams on Prior in those condition (and that we didn't catch a single one) I figured we would be well back in the pack.

[This message has been edited by Jonesin4eyes (edited 06-30-2003).]

[Grabs]

WWG, did you weigh in at the break? Why did you keep 11 bass in the well if they were all the same size? How did they all survive the entire day in your well?

[wastewaterguru]

At the break we weighed in two northerns(one died from hook mortality) and had bass in the well that we were hoping to cull. If the purpose of the mid day weigh in is to prevent fish mortality, then the events should have a no-cull rule.

For everyone information, not a single bass died in the livewell.....

And don't anyone even think about giving me dump for stressing the fish. A nylon netted weigh-in bag that de-slimes the fish and dropped fish at the scale have been seen at every event. My livewell pump ran full speed all day(timer off) and these fish were still very healthy.

[Grabs]

If all the fish you had in the well survived then great,.......

[This message has been edited by Grabs (edited 06-30-2003).]

[Jonesin4eyes]

WW - I may take you up on your offer to teach the worm skipping technic. One night next week sound good?

[CANOPY SAM]

I'm really perplexed by these metro lakes. Growing up and fishing in Northwest Minnesota really must have spoiled me, cause I've never had to work so darn hard for a coupla "shakers" in my life.

This is the second event, and it would've been the third if we hadn't stumbled upon that group of cat's on the Missy, where we've really had to bust tail for fish. Is this standard fare for heavily pressured metro lakes at this time of year, or are we just getting unlucky with the weather and conditions?

Even the morning bite is a little sketchy. But by noon, forget it! Funny thing is, yesterday we kinda "[PoorWordUsage]ed out" around 1:00 pm. so we decided to just kick back and drift Lindy rigs across the flats - as soon as we hit 17-18 ft. we were marking fish all over the place ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE FLATS!
Dennis and I were talking about this and we hypothesized that these fish are going deep for two possible reasons 1)cooler water or 2)sheer terror.

I really believed, with the caliber of fisherpersons in these events, we would be pulling more, and much bigger fish. At least a couple bigger fish.... This tournament series is really forcing me to re-think my old strategies for catching numbers of decent fish. It's a great challenge! And it's really great to see other teams rising to the cahllenge as well! Congrats to Marty and Bill - nice mess of fish on a tough bite!

I'm really glad to see that everyone is pulling together as a group, too. It's nice to see friendly competitions where people are willing to help each other out, and share information when appropriate. If anyone plans to come over to Waconia for pre-fishing I'd love to tag along with ya'(I live right here). I'd really like to tell you that I'll take you out and teach you the lake, but truth be told, I don't know it very well yet either.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the coming events. Waconia has quite a population of really large bass, nice walleye, and as everyone knows, big muskies. I heard a rumor that a walleye fisherman recently caught and released a 55 inch fish. That's a 40+ lb musky! I love living here - I just wish the competition for these resources wasn't so intense.

[Guest]

Canopy Sam,
You and I both - I've fished metro waters a lot, but find those days where the fishing is just plain tough. I don't normally fish much during that 11-4 p.m. window when the lake is a zoo. It seems as though that pressure pushes the fish deeper and/or just plain turns them off.

I usually like to get out by 4-5 a.m. on those busy lakes and fish until 11-12. You can really do well in the morning and evening, but that mid day fishing is tough.. 7 a.m. is a bit late for a really good bass bite paticularly on a blue bird day. I guess it presents a new set of challenges for everyone. I was impressed with the top couple weights coming in - I figured based on how tough it was for us that 15 lbs. would of won it..

It would be really nice to have this on weekday evenings. Those can be pretty good fishing with a LOT less boat traffic.

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- Addict
[email protected]
"Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after."
- Henry David Thoreau

[wastewaterguru]

Next week is bad for me. Going to Denver Tuesday through Friday for work, so my prefishing is going to be limited to this week or the week after next.

I have been in Minnesota for about 6 years now and have only fished a couple of the metro lakes. The first year I was up here I got very discouraged about the fishing because I had been throwing crankbaits, spinnerbaits, and topwater for the last fifteen years in Indiana for bass and wasn't having very good success with any of those presentations here. I was catching some fish but couldn't consistantly catch fish.

The second year, one of my high school friends came to visit me in the middle of July. He is a semi-professional bass fisherman (still has a regular job). He was fishing in an event on Minnetonka and wanted to spend some time prefishing. Of course I volunteered to go with him. At the launch, he began pulling out all of his gear for the day.......two rods and two bags of plastics. I laughed at him. "What is a tournament angler like yourself thinking having only two rods for a tournament."

His response to me.....

"I know what works for me. These are the two presentations I have had the most success with on lakes with heavy traffic."

So I took my tackle box full of hard baits and put it in his truck and we went fishing.

The first three hours I didn't catch a fish as I watched my buddy pull keeper after keeper out from under docks, boats, and rafts. I knew he was prefishing and all but I finally got frustrated and asked him to take time out to help me get a feel for what we were doing.

An hour later, I caught my first fish and came to the realization that I was getting bites the whole time and just wasn't recognizing them for what they were. I was too impatient in my retrieves and not confident enough to set the hook when I couldn't tell if I was hung on a weed or a fish....because they feel the same. Even now that I have fished this way for several years, I still find myself guessing. Sometimes the fish are aggressive and its easy to tell, but A weightless worm will be sucked in by the larger, lethargic bass and you won't know it until you pick up the slack in your line and feel a little resistance. Pull the slack too tight and the bass will simply spit it out.

The next three hours, I caught more than fifty bass in the middle of a sunny, 85 degree July day in 2 foot waves with jet skis buzzing us and people swimming on the docks adjacent to the ones we were fishing.

I was hooked!!

[Lunker]

Seems like just about every color or bait worked for somebody. Anybody use any live bait? During our "lunch break" we threw on some suckers and kicked back, and had one run, bit the line off above a six inch steel leader. I've decided that tourneys are not a true test of your ability, but of your temper ! All in all it was a tough to find the bigguns, but it seems like almost everybody got into some fish. Well, I'm headed up north for a week away from these metro lakes, see ya'll later!

[Dennis Steele]

Growing up here in the cities since I was twelve I have known that fishing these lakes is tough.Thats how I ended up fishing the rivers.No traffic and no pressure.Fish on metro lakes can still be had but you just have to use the proper techniques to get them.WWG has a very good technique for them.That whacky worm deal is sweet.Others have also found a very good pattern on the last couple lakes.The fish are there and they are feeding.The key is to open up your mind and let a little new info in.You can not expect to catch fish with the same baits that trick fish on less pressured waters.It a hard habit to break after years using the same techniques and fishing the same types of structure you might find on less pressured waters.Thats what neat about the LETS league.We are sharing info with others on what is working and what isn't.Its like having twelve day on the water in one.If we open ourselves up to new things we will all come out very good anglers.

[Dennis Steele]

I had a great time again.It was a beutiful day to be on the water even if the fish were not cooperating with us.

It was also nice to meet a couple FMers on the lake that were not fishing the league.I met River Dancer on the water and River Rookie at the launch.Nice to meet you guys.Next tiem we run in to each other I might have a little more time to chat.

We had a tough time finding some decent fish of any species but managed one pike and a nice bass.We also brought in a few legal sunnies that we worked very hard for.(drifting in 18 to 19 feet of water while watching girls on pontoons. )
We found some pike trolling a windy shoreline with cranks and spiner baits but only one would make the legal size.The fish were along the weed edge in 12 to 14 feet of water.
Our legal bass came from 7 feet of water between the reeds.

The Over all standings are now posted in my first post.

[LuckyFish]

Dusty and I actually had a very good day on the lake, we caught numbers of bass and two pike. The problem was that unlike prefishing we could only catch smaller fish.
Because of the pressure on the lake we went with 4" worms instead of 6" or 7" inch as a result we caught smaller fish. I believe my biggest mistake was going for walleyes for the afternoon bite it didn't happen with only a few good takes on jigs I switched to a three-way spinner and crawler while Dusty optioned for a shad rap still no luck. With an hour left we switched back to bass and panfish this time with a 6" worm still only small bass. Dusty went for sunnies getting numbers again but only one that qualified.
end of story. Oh well see you on Waconia. This time I hit that lake at the very least four times. We'll be ready for the next event. Ok WW maybe it's time to get wacky
Lucky