West Central Bass League - Lake Koronis - June 13th
We had 19 boats fishing lake Koronis last Wednesday night. That is actually the lowest turnout we've had so far this year and that was probably just because Koronis is one of the furthest lakes from Willmar on the league schedule. The windy conditions might have kept a few away as well although the wind did lay down nicely and we had a great night to fish. The fish didn't seem to like it though. It seems like a lot of fish were caught but the size was definitely down compared to previous years.
1st - Ron & Joe - 3 - 11.65 lbs
2nd - Dean - 3 - 9.06 lbs
3rd - Brian & Josh - 3 - 8.46 lbs
4th - Paul & Pete - 3 - 8.23 lbs
5th - Tonya & Jared - 3 - 7.79 lbs
Big Bass - Ron & Joe - 4.65 lbs
My dad and I struggled through another tough night and ended up with 3 weighing 7.67 lbs to take 6th place. It certainly could have been a lot worse though. It was just really bad fishing for us and we only ended up catching 4 keepers on the evening. We were one of the last boats blasting off and the 3 areas I wanted to start on were already covered up by the time we got there. Another challenge was the lack of weeds on my best weedline areas. I have no idea why but they just aren't growing right on what used to be my good spots. We did pick up two 2 1/2 lb largemouth on homemade watermelon jigs out of a small patch of stringy grass near a point that usually has a lot of nice coontail. Our 3rd keeper was a smallmouth that came on a chartreuse and white spinnerbait over a shallow sandy flat.
West Central Bass League - Long Lake - June 14th
Long Lake is always a popular lake even though it can be extremely tough. It is definitely better earlier in the year and the 20 teams competing were looking for giant bags. With the early spring I thought we were maybe going to be a week or two late but I was wrong as some massive sacks came to the scales. Another surprising thing was the number of small limits brought in. That usually doesn't happen on this lake.
1st - Travis & Hunter - 3 - 14.55 lbs
2nd - Greg & Matt - 3 - 13.70 lbs
3rd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 13.38 lbs
4th - Ross & Daryl - 3 - 12.46 lbs
5th - Paul & Paul - 3 - 10.53 lbs
Big Bass - Donovan & Brad - 5.74 lbs
Any time you average almost 4 1/2 lbs per fish in Minnesota like we did it is an amazing day. It sure wasn't easy though. Our first stop was a bust and after moving to our second area I started seeing a bunch of small bass. I finally spotted a small cruiser I thought was a keeper so I through a watermelon/red flake Strike King Ocho at it and quickly put it in the boat. Before I could get re-rigged a big one swam up right next to the boat. My dad had a black buzzin frog on and let it sink in front of her face and she gobbled it right up. For awhile we continued to look for cruisers but that just wasn't happening so we mostly flipped reeds the rest of the night and ended up getting 2 more good ones on a green pumpkin Berkley HAVOC Pit Boss. There really was no rhyme or reason to where the fish were. It was just a matter of staying patient and fishing hard.
Big Bass Bonanza - Green Lake, Spicer - June 17th
I don't really know what to say about this one. I have had quite a bit of success on Green Lake in recent years. I feel like I understand the lake pretty well and my results have shown that. This year has really been a struggle for me though and even the lake I was hoping would break me out of my slump would not cooperate. We ended up weighing an 8 fish limit of smallmouth for 19.75 lbs which put us in 15th place out of 31 teams competing.
Going into the event I knew a lot of fish were up shallow on beds or just cruising the rock and sand flats. For some reason though I just was not able to catch quality fish up shallow. Generally I prefer to avoid the crowds anyways and get out on the deep breaks and humps, even at this time of year. I felt that would be a solid game plan and it ended up being just fine for numbers but the size just didn't end up being there.
During the tournament all of our weigh fish came on a drop shot rigged with watermelon or green pumpkin Berkley HAVOC Bottom Hoppers or LFT Twitch worms. We did try fishing shallow with various lures for a good portion of the day but like I said earlier we were just not able to get into the quality fish. One thing I found interesting is that it was almost impossible to get a bite out of the milfoil. Usually that is good at any time of the year but it just wasn't happening for this event.
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