Kandi Lakes Fall Bass League - Nest Lake

This week was the first week of switching to a 12:00 pm start time instead of an 8:00 am start time. We still fish for 5 hours for our best 5 fish but since it is getting later in the year everyone felt like the afternoons would be the best time to fish. After the results on Nest Lake it would be hard to disagree. There were several very good bags weighed in out of the 7 teams who competed. My dad and I ended up taking first place with 18.48 lbs for our 5 and 2nd place had 17.58 lbs. Since there were 7 teams only 2 spots were paid. 3rd place still had 16.45 lbs and 4th had 14.44 lbs, so overall the fishing was very good. My dad and I also had big bass for the day at 4.77 lbs.

Nest Lake is one of my favorite lakes in Kandiyohi County but I really was not looking forward to this event. The reason was that we would not be allowed to weigh in any smallmouths. It is catch and release only for smallmouths at this time of year and that is primarily what we target on the lake. We do know how to catch largemouths out there but a couple weeks ago we looked for some and only managed 2 small keepers so we went in knowing we would just have to figure something out as the day went along.

We started on the area were we actually ended up catching all of our weigh fish but we struck out on the first pass through. Then we headed to a few reed areas and caught several small keepers. After fishing the reeds thoroughly we pulled out to the weedbeds in 3-5 feet of water and filled out our limit. All of those fish came on a variety of lures including tubes, buzzin frogs and Red Eye Shads. It felt good to have a limit so quickly but since it only weighed about 8 lbs we knew we had to upgrade. We ended up trying several more spots with no success. Finally I said we have to go back where we started and figure those fish out. It is a large flat in 3-7 feet of water with thick clumps of milfoil. It looked so good I knew fish had to be there and they were. Almost imediately after returning I caught one close to 4 lbs on a jig flipped in the milfoil and then less than 5 minutes later my dad put one in the boat that was about the same size. Now things were starting to happen and with 2 hours left in the day there was plenty of time to catch 3 more good ones. We just kept working that same general area the rest of the day and ended up catching probably 15-20 keepers to get to our 18.48 lbs. All of those fish came on a 1/2 oz. watermelon jig with a watermelon Lake Fork Pig Claw trailer. Most of the fish came on the outside edges of the milfoil but the biggest fish of the day came from a small hole right inside one of the larger patches.