Smallie Report 6/1

I planned on starting today fishing around Vineland but looking at the lake conditions at Conoco at 10:30 I decided I better not with the chop. I ended up fishing the southern portion of the lake and got out of the wind as best as I could.

I started on keying in on the transition areas where it went from rocks to weeds. I quickly caught 1 14″ LM on a small crank and thought that it was the pattern to start with. Well, fishing the same areas for the next hour and a half with some follows (I think they where muskies but I couldn’t tell for sure ) I decided to try and slow down a little. I started throwing some small finesse worms, tubes, and stick baits with no luck. I was able to see some fish crusing but they where not interested in any of my offerings. I then made another judgment call and switched tactics and moved to a sand and sparse weed transition area that had the wind blowing pretty good on it. Pretty quickly I had a couple of follows on my small crank, baby-1 style firetiger, and was able to see some smallies crusing. (Still, I was unable to catch any of these fish I saw ) I finally ended up cashing in around 1:30. It seemed pretty apparent that the fish would move up in small schools to feed on these transistion areas. The would move around the transition but not far from it to feed. When I hit one of these schools I would pretty instantly hit two/three fish on almost consecutative casts. The first couple of smallies that I caught where around the 14-15″ variety and as I kept moving up this shoreline and repeatedly casting to these sand/weed transition areas I started to get the bigger fish.
At the days end, I caught 11 bass, 2 LM and the rest smallies. The LM where about 14″ and the smallies on average was about 16/17″. The biggie of the day came was my last fish and that was 20 1/4″. ( ) This fish wa an absolute pig. I measured the height of it and it was at least 6″ tall!

Keys for me: Staying in the wind blown shoreline where the sand and weeds met. I repeatedly casted to these areas and the fish would eventually turn. Also, Keeping the bait moving was a huge factor. I saw a couple of fish that would turn away once I paused my crank.

The water temp that I caught fished ranged from 53-56 degrees.

I am very excited about the coming weeks because I know that it is only going to get better. I cannot wait.

Alphid, sir, that was an absolutely awesome bass report from the pond! Thanks for sharing your day with us.

This is the first time I’ve heard of a Largemouth being caught on the pond. What kind of a population is there??

Great read, even if it was about those “other” fish. Keep the reports coming!!

Newt,

There is a pretty healthy population of largemouth in the southern and western bays. I have seen a number of four and five pounders come out of there, but the majority of the fish seem to be around 16″.

i hooked into a LM last year on a Ringworm that probably went over 5 pounds.

Do people target these fish or are they “bonus” catches? It just seems weird to me that this is the first I’ve heard of a largemouth population in Mille Lacs. I fish the west side…maybe they don’t exist there.?

The LM do exist just in a more select areas of the lake. We have had a couple of club tourneys out there and when people get into the LM they are big.
My reasoning- why go for LM when you have soo many SM at your finger tips. Plus they can get very huge out there too.

Also, I did not see any of the bugs people where reporting on the north side, it was very windy though.

We see a couple LM in our boat harbor every year. Their around, like other people pointed out, they just don’t get targeted much. The kids catch the most of them from shore or the neighborhood docks.

The bugs we are seeing are on the rock/mud, rock/sand transitions.

I know of people who target them, and I do on occassion. Yes, there are plenty on the west side.

Well then I guess I gotta try some largies out there then too.

Hook……you forgot about all the bugs on our house and garage? And the ones stuck on the front of my pickup.