shallow small bass

[TR21HP]

Went to Chisago this am and tried a deep weed bite right off the bat and all that was caught was a 5 pounder by my wife. Decided to try a shallow, milfoil bite and caught small males one after another in 3 feet of water. Nothing large shallow so got off the lake as the pleasure crowd was coming on. Anybody else been hitting these smaller fish like that. It is encouraging to see these small,second year, I would guess, males though.

[Fisherman45]

Seems that all I can catch in shallow this year is small male and lots of em. Most fish over 3 lbs have been in 8' or more.

[Deitz Dittrich]

Chisago has been a TOUGH nut to crack this year. Its the lake I call my home lake.. But for the life of me can not find a consistant bite. That lake has kicked my butt all year..

I'm going to blame the walleye.. I caught more walleye this year than the last 5 combined..

[Deitz Dittrich]

Not that I am complaining.. they have tasted quite good!.. 8-)

[Larson15]

I usually do well on Chisago early in the year shallow but this year has been different. I think with the early spring the fish moved to the outside earlier this year. I fished that lake on opener and found a few fish on beds but not nearly as many as i thought. This was the first year I fished the weedline on opener. I have had some really good days out there this year and its all been deep and slow.

The "bass fishing" for walleye has been on fire. I have not idea what's going on but they sure like the jig n' pig

[EBass]

Interesting - they lake I hit on Sunday had the bigguns shallow (17-18"ers) while the outside had the 14-15"ers plus tons o pike and even crappies.

[Cecil]

It would make sense that with low water the majority of the fish moved deeper.

[Fisherman45]

I haven't had any walleye the wife has been getting them on crappie minnows. But I have had a lot more bigger pike taking my jig-n-pig and if you aren't on em right away they bite off the trailer or the whole thing pretty quickly.

[Nick Kuhn]

So for the first time this year we put our boat in our own lake (tells you what I think of the fishing there). Saturday afternoon was about ideal (except for the pleasure boaters) to find fish. I just hit the wind on the north shore, actually caught a walleye (first one our family has pulled out of our lake since 2006) on a shad rap right along the break ~8 FoW. Put on a DT14 and threw out to about 12 FoW and banged it off the gravel, put a nice fat 18" bass in the boat. Then mom calls for dinner, went in for an hour and by the time I got back out the wind had died and there were no fish except crappies.

Sunday with the wind shifting I moved up shallower and caught a bunch of 12"-14" bass. Seen a kid on a dock take an 18" with a hook and worm, probably in about 8 FoW. Not much doing in the pads, but that may have been due to all the water toys running around in close proximity to them (and even through them a few times).

Marked quite a few fish (most absolutely glued to hard bottoms in 7-14 FoW) but they weren't in an eating mood. Oh well, back to better waters next time.

[blakjack23]

When isn't there lots of small fish shallow? You gotta weed through those to find those pigs hiding amongst them.