Minnesota Bass Opener Reports

My first trip is in the books and it looks a lot like the past couple of Bass Openers for me with fair numbers of fish but a lack of quality bites.

I fished Platte/Sullivan (Crow Wing/Morrison) from about 5:30 to 11:30AM and got 28 bass from 11 to 15 inches.

Got fish on Flukes, Poppers, Buzz Frogs, and swim jigs. The weeds are really up this year and already making for some challenging fishing.

I probably should have tried docks but with it being Memorial Weekend, I think I will leave doing that until either early in the day or until after everyone goes home on Monday.

I also noticed the weeds were really up. Picked up a number of smaller fish in the shallows with a zara spook type bait. had a number of sunnies in the shallows spawning and they were whacking at my topwaters so we moved. Fished around another dozen or so spots and finally found a nice weedline edge close to some deeper water and picked up some nice fish there including my personal best, a 6-6 toad on a spinnerbait. Didn’t make it out today because I thought the rain was going to hit a little earlier and my daughter was coming with so we’re going to try tomorrow. (Darn rain never came…argh. A missed day of fishing!)

Great BASS Josh, wow.

Anyone else get after them this weekend??
I hope to this next week.
Jack

On Sunday I was out much longer 6AM to 3PM and only got 19 bass, but the size was better although no really big fish.

Got these fish on Flukes, Spooks, Snagproof Frogs, Buzz Frogs, and swim jigs.

In the evening I headed to Mille Lacs for some shore fishing for smallies and they were there. I got 6 with 4 being over 17″ and the biggest was 19.25″. All on swim jigs or a spinnerbait.

There is a more detailed reports at my blog Bass Pundit.

I hit Tonka today. Fished from noon until about 3pm when the storm hit. Saw a 5# dead and floating off Cedar Point, that was a bummer. Got over to Carson and saw a big ol toad in 3.5 FOW. He was in the channel heading towards the lily pads. I threw everything in the tackle box… Scum Frogs (a couple weak bites but no fish in the boat). Spinner baits, zilch, swim jig, zilch, finesse jig w/ beaver, zilch. Buzzbait, zilch. Zara Spook, zilch. My buddy had one hit this odd looking crankbait I’ve never seen. Kind of a one piece lazy ike looking thing in firetiger but it got off. I finally switched to a texas rigged ring fry and started hammering them. No real big ones, avg was 2# or so but the bites were a bit more aggressive and we picked up probably 8 fish in an hour with two or three more whiffs on my part. The fish didn’t seem to be hitting the fry’s all that hard but the hooks were pretty well buried in the gullet when I got them to the boat so they were inhaling them. I think we had one casualty, I couldn’t get the hook out of its throat so I cut the line and wished it the best. I hate when that happens.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to keep that from happening, I’m all ears. I was using a 4″ green/watermelon colored ring fry with a 5/0 hook. About as weightless as you can get but still casts surprisingly well.

Hoping Mille Lacs gives up some smallies tomorrow before I go back to work on Thursday and Friday.

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…hooks were pretty well buried in the gullet when I got them to the boat so they were inhaling them. I think we had one casualty, I couldn’t get the hook out of its throat so I cut the line and wished it the best. I hate when that happens.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to keep that from happening, I’m all ears. …

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I fish a lot of flukes, senkos…gut-hooking ‘happens’…here’s the trick that’ll take care of these fish…

http://www.electric-bass.org/throughTheGill.htm

this flat out works…I make one small modification: I like to use a stainless steel STRAIGHT hemostat…and actually run it ‘up through the gills’ to grab the hook eye and pull it out through the gills…as it’s a lot less intrusive when going ‘through’ the gills and as a smaller object, it’s easier to see where/what you need to do inside that fish’es mouth… you can use your fingers, but I’m of German Farmer descent and have polish sausages for fingers…so for a 12″ bass, they just don’t ‘fit’ real well…

Plus, it works great on smaller fish…and smaller mouths like I see on spotted bass and smallmouth…

You do this a couple times and you’ll be amazed … at how much that hook point, although ‘buried in the gullet’ doesn’t actually seem to penetrate the esophageal wall…and how much less often you’ll see fish bleeding…

Give it a try…and share this around.

This may be one of the ‘best’ things In-fisherman has ever shared…in terms of positive impact on our fisheries.

Keep in mind this also works for bluegills, catfish…the concept is the same, the ‘operating room’ is just smaller…

Kurt, thanks for the post. I’ve actually used that method successfully many times. In fact, I think I’ve even seen the episode where a guide shows this method to Doug Stange for the first time and he was amazed.

In my case the fish I had that was hooked badly was actually hooked in the bottom part of the mouth. (See the red line on the image below)I couldn’t see the hook point. All it did when I tried to bend the shank was make the fish squirm. It was buried in there pretty good.