With the onset of the recent heat wave, just one combination came to mind; rocks and big bass! I took my brother, Rob, out on Saturday, the 15th, for some hot weather bass fishing on Lake Minnetonka. We started out fishing a weed edge in 15ft of water. He used a Texas rigged Outkast Tackle Naughty Bug with a 3/16oz. weight, on a 3/0 Gamakatsu hook, and before I could even rig up my jig worm, he had 4 fish in the boat, ouch! Though I wasn’t as productive as my brother on this spot, I still caught some decent fish. The spot produced some 3 pound fish, but we decided that the deep rocks may hold the larger females. So, we left that area . After fishing a couple of deeper rock points with no luck, we ended up fishing a larger rock point using a tube jig. Unfortunately, we had little success with this technique. We then headed to one of my favorite spots on the lake, and not one cast into it, Rob hooked into a big one! Shortly after he set the hook, it was my turn. We ended up with a double, with the fish weighing 4.5 pounds and 4 pounds respectively. They were two great fish. By this time, the sun was high and the temperature was steadily increasing. I turned to my Brother and said, “It’s Carolina rigging time”. We fished two separate spots, working the deep rocky points, with no luck. I decided that we were going to try one more location, and if we were unsuccessful, it was going to be time to put the boat on the trailer. And, as fate would have it, the last spot of the day, and low and behold the school of fish we had been after. My first cast with the Carolina rig and wham! I hooked the biggest fish on the day, an easy 5 pounder. Then, Rob cast to the rocky point and came up with a solid 3 pounder. We stayed on the spot, and caught an additional 14 Bass. Included in our count was a 2 ½ pound Smallmouth, off of a rock point, that was no bigger than 10 feet wide.
Overall, we had a productive outing. Our best success came from Carolina rigging an Outkast Tackle Cotton Candy Pigg. However, a 3/16 ounce jig and worm also yielded some larger fish. Our grand total for morning was 30 Bass. They were all caught between the hours of 6:00 AM to 12:30 PM. I will be hitting this body of water again on Friday the 21st for a guide trip, check back for another report.
