White Bear Lake Bass?

[fellowx]

Hi Guys! I'm the new kid on here, i've been reading the posts for a while now but just signed up. I never really cared much for fishing until last year. Because I never caught anything worth while. It wasn't until I bought my boat last year that I really got into the fish fever. Fishing on a boat has just opened a whole new horizon and level for fishing. I also need to give credit to the stickbait (senko) on my new found favorite hobby.

I fished WBL last week and only caught 4 bass. The biggest was 1lb 11 oz but the bite was very light. All the fish were caught on a green pumpkim 5" senko. We first targeted the east shoreline docks and worked our way to the marina on the southwest end. My question is for those that have fished WBL before where have you had the most success? Looks like most guys out were fishing for muskies and eyes.

The structure was different from what I'm used to. The docks were very clear, sand bars and hardly any vegetation or weed growth.. I'm used to structure like Big Marine, Demontreville, Waconia and just got skunked at WBL.

[funbilly]

Welcome, I do about 85% of my fishing on White Bear no matter what species. (its very close to my house)I've been doing the same thing out there, the only thing I look for is bottom changes around the docks. I do much better around docks that the shallow weed line runs up too. Also sand to gravel to weeds etc. I have tried deeper with no great luck.

[Ray Esboldt]

fellowx,

Welcome to FishingMinnesota.com. We're happy to have you and look forward to your future participation.

I guess I call White Bear Lake my home lake. It's where I cut my teeth on bass fishing, have probably spent more time than any other body of water, and I live about 3/4 of a mile from it. If I were going to design a lake, I would design one much like WBL.

White Bear is not a good shallow water lake for most of the summer. Mainly because of the features you pointed out - lack of "slop", lots of traffic, clear water, etc. It is a good deep bite lake in the summer for those same reasons that make for a poor shallow summer bite. You'll need to spend some time with a map locating off-shore structure in the 10 to 22 foot depths and fishing it. Those depths don't make for automatic bass action (they do make for automatic hammerhandle pike action). I would say a great starter bait for eliminating water is a deep running crankbait. It's pretty simple from there. If you find lots of little pike, eliminate the area for the day. That doesn't mean bass don't use the area, but they're not going to be there if a gang pike have grabbed a stronghold. Cover water until you find the combination of cover and bottom-content that bass prefer. It's that simple. I'll leave it up to you to refine things from there.

[FishingRebel]

Fish Rapalas there for bass....