And so it begins...

The Minnesota bass season is officially in full swing. Memorial Day weekend is what we bass fisherman dream about all winter long. I had done some fishing earlier of course but for me I just can't really fish the way I want to fish until it is actually legal. Speaking of dreams I had pretty much a dream day on the water for the opener. I chose to hit an area lake, never mind which area, where I figured there would be some big fish up spawning. Right away in the morning I pulled up to one of my favorite areas and actually lost one about 4 lbs on my very first cast. I've heard catching a fish on the first cast is bad luck but what does losing a big one on the first cast mean? The rest of the morning was really slow. At 11:00 am I only had 2 in the boat but one was 4 lbs and the other was right about 5 lbs. After that it was on though! The water temps had warmed up a few degrees and I'm pretty sure that's what made the difference. For the day I ended up catching 12 that went 4 lbs or better topped by a 4.97, 5.22 and a 5.53. About half of the fish were caught off beds with techniques I will not reveal here. The other half were caught blind casting a LFT Magic Shad in spawning areas.

It was an amazing day that does not happen often enough but what really gets my blood flowing is competitive fishing. I have already fished one tournament this year down in Iowa but with the season open here in MN it's game on! This week we had our first two West Central Bass League events and tomorrow is the first Big Bass Bonanza tournament of the year.

West Central Bass League - Lake Florida - June 1st

The West Central Bass League runs every Wednesday and Thursday until the end of August. The lakes are drawn at random and this year Lake Florida was the first stop of the season. It was a beautiful night and the winds actually laid down for once and it was flat calm out on the water. Despite the conditions we only had 21 boats turn out to fish. I say only 21 because based on last year I expected the number to be closer to 30 boats. In any case Florida is a small lake and 21 boats is plenty out there. The fishing ended up being pretty tough although the weights were better on average than they were last year. Here are the results.

1st - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 10.87 lbs

2nd - Paul & Pete - 3 - 8.86 lbs

3rd - Tom & Jim - 3 - 8.74 lbs

4th - Jeff & Greg - 3 - 8.56 lbs

5th - Lee & Nick - 3 - 8.29 lbs

Big Bass - Lee & Nick - 4.01 lbs

As you can see my dad and I were able to take 1st place on the 1st night! What a great way to kick off the league season. With the cold spring we've had here most of the competitors focused on shallow water and docks. I heard there were a lot of fish caught on beds as well. We decided to buck the trend though and focus on deeper water from 8 to 16 feet. Our first stop was a bust but after making a few moves we found some better quality fish in the deeper water. My dad ended up catching 2 of our weigh fish. 1 came on a watermelon homemade jig and the other was on a Red Eye Shad. I added our big fish of the night, which weighed 3.95 lbs, on a watermelon Sweet Beaver with about 20 minutes to go.

West Central Bass League - Green Lake - June 2

Unlike the calm conditions the previous night, Thursday hit us with 30 mph winds out of the SE. Those kind of winds are tough on any lake but it is the absolute worst wind for fishing on Green Lake. Only 13 teams showed up to fish but the conditions were absolutely brutal out there and the results show it.

1st - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 8.72 lbs

2nd - Ron & Joe - 3 - 7.14 lbs

3rd - Paul & Troy - 3 - 6.53 lbs

4th - Scott & Al - 3 - 6.35 lbs

Big Bass - Ron & Joe - 3.53 lbs

Well make it 2 in a row! We have some pretty stiff competition in the West Central Bass League so winning 2 in a row is no small feat. I'm just happy to start off the season with such a bang. Hopefully we can carry it throughout the entire year. Despite winning by a healthy margin the fishing for us was by no means easy. We did end up catching a fair number of small keeper largemouth but triggering the smallies was extremely difficult. We ended up weighing 2 smallies and one largemouth. My dad caught the green one on a Texas rigged tube in a milfoil patch. I caught the smallies on a tube on a shallow sand flat and our big fish which went 3.50 lbs on a watermelon LFT Hyper Finesse worm rigged on a drop shot in 25 feet of water. Our big fish came with about 30 minutes left to fish and it was out in the rough water. I was taking every other wave over the bow trying to hold on that deep structure but it paid off. Those are the situations I'm so glad I went with a 52 inch shaft on my Minn Kota instead of the standard 42 inch!