Foot Lake

After spending much of the weekend cleaning and polishing the boat and doing other preseason maintenance we decided after it had been clean for a few hours that it was time to get the boat dirty again. There was only a couple hours to fish after supper so we stayed close to home and headed to Foot Lake right outside Willmar. Since my dad and I are running the Kandi Lakes Bass League this year I decided to throw Foot Lake in the mix on a trial basis the last week of the season. I'm not too sure how happy people are about that. It seems like most folks don't think there are any bass in the lake. They don't know what they're missing. While there may not be many giants there are certainly enough bass to have a fun evening.

Since bass season is not open yet we were technically not bass fishing tonight. We were fishing for walleyes and northerns with Rapala Shad Raps and Husky Jerks. We didn't manage any walleyes but the bass and northerns sure liked them. In about 2 hours we caught 6 bass, 3 northerns, a sheephead, and a big buffalo. Most of the bass were in the 12 to 13 inch range but my dad popped a nice 2.66 lb largemouth on a chartreuse and white shallow Shad Rap. One tip for fishing this lake if you haven't before is to fish the bank. Every fish we caught tonight was by casting to the bank and they all hit within a couple turns of the reel handle. There is alot of structure on the lake but in my experience the bass stick to the bank most of the time.

I am really ready to go for the bass season. It's less than a week away now and I'm ready to fish for bass instead of just walleyes and northerns. I think tomorrow I'm going to head out to Long Lake and see if anything is up bedding yet. I probably won't even make a cast but just put the trolling motor down and cruise to see what I can see. Even if you're not fishing just looking at bass on the bed can be a lot of fun. At least I think it is. Especially with the toad monsters that live in Long Lake.