Bass Season- From The Opener Until Now. 6/17/11

Originally, this post was going to be my obligatory bass opener post, but it is long past so I will turn it into a general report instead.

On the opener, I decided to hit this little lake by where we camp (sorry- I'm not tellin' : ) ).  It is stocked with trout and has good numbers of pumpkin seeds.  Truth be known, I had very little luck.  When I put in, the water was still a little chilly at 59F or so.  I was sharing the lake with a couple other boats so I decided to start down the opposite bank and work my way around so I didn't crowd anyone.  Power fishing a buzzbait.  Nothing.  Not even a boil.

I kept cruising and switched up to a chatter bait and moved off the bank a little bit and started fishing the inside weedline.  The lake has eurasion mifoil and it was starting to get tall, say three feet beneath the surface in anywhere from five to nine feet.  Nothing, although I did catch one of those Rainbow Trout that are stocked and can almost see why people like to fish for them.

After that the sun was up more and moved a little closer to the bank with a 1/4oz Beetle Spin (Quit laughing.  This is my goto bait for bad fish days.)  No bass.  But lots of pumpkin seeds.  Those little suckers can be vicious too!  And that pretty much tells the tale of how my opener went.  At the end of the day, I boated 1 small bass and probably 40-50 pumpkin seeds.

My next bassin' trip wasn't until the following Saturday and I decided to head out to Rice Lake near Paynesville.  I drove around and nearly ended up taking ownership of a nice rocky point.  Luckily, that didn't happen.  Boat and driver are very happy about that.  Anyway, I looked at my phone (Navionics is very handy, must use it more often in unfamiliar waters - feel free to whack yourself in the head, Jeremy) and decided to head to a section of the south end of the lake because there is a fairly fast drop into 20 or so feet. The water temp was mid 60's so I figured they'd be on beds.

I started out with a 1/4oz Bluegill Swim Jig (All Terrain Tackle) and tossed it passed the front of a dock.  Slow rolled it back and a smallie crushed it hard enough I thought I was going to lose my rod at first.  First fish boated was a nice one, measured out at 17".  No belly so I'm guessing it was a he.  I kept rolling that swim jig and caught a nice mixed bag of largemouth and smallmouth all around 16-18".  See pics below.

My last trip was last Friday and knowing that I didn't have a lot of time, I went down to the Rum River about five minutes away from home.  Once again, slow rolling that same swim jig.  The result was a personal best, I know that much for sure.  No idea how much it weighed or how long it was because I was backpacking it.

So far, I may not have had a very productive year, but I've had a lot of fun anyway.  And I bought a different scale that will be going in my backpack for the next time I hook into a tank like that.

As for now, I'm getting ready to head out and try some of the new swim jigs I picked up by Northstar Custom Baits.  They are a little different than the All Terrain Tackle swim jigs I'm used to and I'm excited to use them because I think the colors are better.  We'll see if the fish agree!

Eat Bass...?

I am truly working on an entry for bass opener, but truth be known, at this point it seems moot.  Being the fact that it is almost two weeks past.  Instead, I thought I'd share a link to a blog that I don't really read a whole lot but I saw a title that caught my eye:  "Eat Bass, Improve Your Fishery?"

There are some good points made, and, at risk of being excommunicated by the bassin' community, I too practice selective harvest.  Here, though, are my rules:

I don't do it on a lake I don't know very well.  If it's my first time there, I have no way of knowing if a 15" fish is average size or not.  However, if I'm on my "home water", I know that 12-14" fish are incredibly common where a 16-17" fish is not and anything bigger than that is a tourny winner (no kidding), so I have no problem keeping one or two fish so the other 20,000 from that year class may have a better chance at getting to that 16-17" slot and even bigger.

Another rule I follow is anything over 15" goes back.  I don't know why, that is simply where I drew the line.  It is arbitrary and completely unscientific.  It kills me when I hear of or see a picture of some 5lber that ended up in a frying pan.

Another:  No killing of a fish that has eggs.  I would hope that this would be obvious.

I think the bottom line is that there is a fine balance between what is appropriate for each unique body of water.  Over harvesting has been and certainly can be a problem that can devastate a fishery, but blindly practicing catch and release can have negative consequences as well.

Just my opinion.

The River Isn't All That's Flooded.

A lot of eyes have been on our rivers this year, and they are high.  In fact, I've lived in Cambridge for six years and I've never seen the Rum River as high as it is this year.  So much that the DNR has closed access to the launches both in Cambridge and between here and Princeton.

As the winter finally loosens its icy grip on our lakes, I usually do a little driving around to the launch.  Just because I can.  Although this year, I was surprised by what I found.  I also took a few snap shots.  First is the launch, or what used to be the launch at Skogman Lake.

 As you can see, the launch itself is completely under water.  I'm not sure if anyone has tried to use it yet, but I know I'm not going to.

 Here's another showing how far up the water has come.  Typically, the water line is on the other side of the bushes and trees.

Another shot of the "parking lot" at Skogman.  The water has also pooled on the other side of parking lot.

I also made a stop at Lake Fannie, which is connected to Skogman via a culvert underneath HWY 95.

 Here again, the launch is completely flooded. 

The next weekend, I visited Green Lake between Cambridge and Princeton.

 At least here the launch is exposed and usable.  But the water is still high, so high that some of the "guest cabins" at the rich folks houses would get wet if the wind blew strong enough.  (No exaggerating here either.)

Another shot of Green.

Concerning the Rum River.  As I said before, access to the launches are blocked off.  But you can still get to the river by cutting across a small field at the launch in between Cambridge and Princeton.  I took a few shots and was astounded.

 These shots reminded me, vaguely, of Louisiana.

At normal levels, this embankment is a steep drop of about five feet.  Now the water is fairly level with the bank.

Ice Out 2011.

One of my favorite (close to home) lakes is nearly open.  Just a thin layer of slushy looking stuff.  Skogman and Fannie still have substantial ice cover yet, but they are larger than Florence and go out a week or so later than Florence.  So, we'll see how things go.

In the meanwhile, some folks started a group on Facebook called Minnesotans for an Early Bass Season.  If you're a Minnesota bass addict, and many of us are, you also know that the period of time between the end of February and Memorial Day weekend can be the longest stretch on the calendar.  The purpose of this group seems to be to explore ways to encourage shortening (or maybe do away with) the closed season on bass.  I think it's worth checking out if you have the time.

From Harris to St. John's.

This is my first season doing fantasy fishing.  So far, I haven't much to complain about.  My Classic picks were ho-hum, but four of my guys made the final cut at the Harris Chain.  I'm pretty psyched about that.  I haven't really talked about my picks much because I don't really have a lot of time to really come up with any sort of strategy other than making picks based on consistency.  So, I'll break down my Harris picks and talk a little about St. Johns.

Harris:

A)  KVD - Picked because he whooped my be-hind at the classic and really, there are few as consistent as this guy.
B)  Bobby Lane- Local stick.  I was disappointed with how it turned out, but that's why it's called fishing and it happens.
C)  Rick Clunn- Honestly, I had no clue who to pick.  Clunn just stood out in that bucket.
D)  Chris Lane- Same as Bobby, except performed way better.
E)  JVD- I was on the fence between Palaniuk and JVD.  Swapped them Wednesday night before I went to bed.  It was a pure gamble that paid off nicely.

St. Johns preliminary picks:

A)  KVD - Cookies.  I've got nothing else to say.
B)  Scroggins - I'm not sure where he's actually from, BASS says Palatka and Bassfan says San Mateo which is supposed to be farther downstream near Jacksonville (depending on which website you choose for maps because Yahoo puts it 10 minutes out of Palatka).  But I do know one thing, the last Bass open there, he placed 7th in.  He's got very local knowledge, a positive record, and will have his own bed to sleep in.  Now.  Here is where the bait-monkey shows up with a nice shiny wrench to throw into the works.  Shaw.  This will mostly likely be a bed fishing show - supermoon style.  After Harris, do you really want to bet against him in favor of someone who finished nine places behind?
C)  I'm still not sure who so I'm going to say Clunn again
D)  I'm between Lane and Thliveros but I'm leaning toward P-T.  They're both locals but P-T won here a while back so that gives me some confidence.  But here's the catch:  He won that in mid-January.  No spawn then and it's been fairly widely acknowledged that this will also be a bed tourny.  How well does he do with site fishing?  Well, let's just say that the Harris event has made me a little leery of jumping in the 'gator infested canals with P-T.
E)  JVD  I'm fairly set on this one.  He placed third in the same open event on the St. Johns that P-T won, and given his performance at Harris, I'm willing to take another swing here.

So there you have it.  I have two picks that I'm solid on (and I don't care how hard you roll your eyes.  They both have cookies.) and three that I'm really soft on.  I'll likely spend the remainder of tonight, tomorrow and Wednesday second guessing myself going over stats and trying to find out more about the river itself  but the biggest theme seems to be this:  bed fishing.  As a side note, interestingly, Shaw only has 5.2% ownership as of this writing.  If he promises to bring more pork chop sandwiches....

Odd Finds In Odd Places

It's rare when a posting on a fishing blog starts with "This morning, while grocery shopping", but this is one of them.  You see, I live way out here.  I like it, one of the cool things is that we have a super Walmart -quit rolling your eyes...-.  I usually cruise by the sporting goods section just because I can and noticed that they had changed the layout of the fishing section.

I grunted a little, that indifferent, lackadaisical response that says "Dang.  I'm going to have to go through it all again" in one cohesive sound.  I started moving on and a yellow box caught my eye.  It said Strike King.  Square bill.  1.5.  KVD  "I thought these were sold out everywhere".  So, I decided for $5.5something that I'd pick a few up.  I wasn't planning on picking up any cranks until the Northwest Sportshow in March/April so it was completely spur of the moment, but it goes to show you that when everyone else is sold out that you can find things where you least expect them.

Winter Bassin' - Minnesota Style

Most of Minnesota's water is ice locked. On the local lakes we had 20" of ice and probably a little more after the cold this past week. So, obviously, there aren't many places to scratch that open water itch.

Well, I wasn't ready to put down the long rod in favor of my ice sticks so I decided to do some searching. You see videos of guys hitting open water spots in the dead of winter and figure "there are only so many places that can happen at".  So I did some research and read a few forums and for a while the only thing I could find was pool 2  (edit- I meant to say pool 4) on the Mississippi.  That's a long way to go from my town so I kept looking.  I finally found a spot that's only a little over an hour away.

My first trip out was 1/3/11.  I forgot my waders at home so I was hoping the water would be drawn down a little bit so there would be a bit of shoreline to walk.  When I arrived, no luck, water was high and the surface current looked pretty quick.  So I fished from the launch and managed to land a couple decent smallies.  The first smallies I've caught that are worth mentioning, in fact, seeing as how I've only typically fished waters containing only largemouth, or very minimal amounts of smallmouth.

My second trip was 2/11/11.  I remembered to grab my waders and grabbed my muck boots, just in case.  It's a good thing I did because when I tried to put my waders on, I found that my socks and thermals were too thick and I couldn't get my feet into them.  On with the muck boots and so with the fishing.  I had far better luck this time.

I walked upstream a little ways from the launch and threw upstream toward the main channel.  I started popping it slow, crawling along the bottom.  Rock.  Snaaaag!  Crap.  Walked back toward the launch site and manage to shake it free.  I bet that photographer that was camped out in the Dodge was having fun watching that.  Heh.

Back at it I go.  Except I'm noticing different texture than my first trip.  Mud bottom with a transition to a rocky-sandy-rubblish-whateveritwas.  That's where I was getting my hits.  Not in the eddies, but on that transition.  Pull it up, stop it, shake it and crawl it.  Bite.  Nice.

I had ten smallies in three hours, a mixed bag of runts and a few pretty nice ones. We won't talk about the missed fish or the ones that got off.  We'll chalk that up to "operator error", learn, and get better.

But all things come to a close and this was also my last open water -and bass- trip of the season.  You see, our season closes at the end of the month, but I'm fresh out of days off during the week and from what I've heard this spot can be a zoo during the weekend, and that just doesn't turn my crank.  So I'm solely on the ice now and looking forward to some new friends coming up from Missouri for some ice fishing over the seasons closing weekend.  That's always a good time.

Here are a couple photos from my recent open water winter excursions.

1/3/11

2/11/11