The nice weather sure got the fish going on Tonka. Water temps were steadily climbing every minute on the water. This past week I had been prefishing for a tournament Friday and possibly Saturday. Usually crankbaits worked on the outside edges and over the top of the growing milfoil. This pattern gave nothing but pike. It didn’t matter what bay I fished, if I threw a crankbait, I caught pike. The milfoil spots I like to fish didn’t produce with jigs either yet, mainly due to the fact that the milfoil hasn’t grown up quite enough to give the bass the canopy and open up underneath yet. Soon, very soon.
The best pattern for numbers of fish prefishing for me was to flip a 4 1/2" Outkast Flipping Tube on inside weed edges and pockets. Most of the fish were solid 2-2 1/2lb fish like the one my wife is holding. I like using these particular tubes because they have a solid head that I can screw a Florida rig weight into. There are also the perfect length for a 3/0 wide gap hook. They are very durable as well. Flipping these tubes produced many fish on Wednesday and Thursday. I would hold the boat out over the weeds and cast to shore and slowly work the tube back to the weed edge. Most of the fish would hit when the tube was right on the inside weed edge. The best color each day was junebug. The second picture is another that came just short of 3lbs.
While working the inside weed edges, you will somtime come accross an open pocket. This is where most all of the bigger fish came from. This third picture shows a bass that measured just over 20" and would have probably weighed just under 5 lbs.
Come tournament day on Friday, my partner and I figured it would take a 4lb average to win. He had been seeing some nice fish on beds, so figuring we would probably get our best weight that way, off to the beds we went. Unfortunatly we were only able to get 4 fish off the beds. We did manage to scrounge lots of other fish, but most were smaller males cruising. The tournament was won with 27 lb 9 oz on 8 fish, and the final check went to 24lb 9oz. Our 21 lb bag didn’t quite cut it.
That last fish is a real slob!! Get that one on a tube as well?
Hey mike,
i was out on tonka yesterday, Saterday June 5th also. I was cruzing around in a 14 aluminum boat. Me and my wifes cousin managed to get alot of strikes but only put 3 in the boat. we had hooks spit at us, we have soft bites, but we managed to get close to 3 pounds with 2 fish that we kept. we where using a top water scum frog in the lillies and the heavy milfoil. had a few that dove the bottom hard and managed to get the hook out of thier mouths and hooked to the weeds. but all in all it was a good day.
shane
oh yeah, on more thing, i was wearing a red and black FLW rainsuit for most of the morning while we where out cruzing. we started out of the landing by 19 and 51. then headed for a little pot hole type chanel that was mostly all heavy weeds.
Good job in the tournament! Couple more good ones and you would have been in the money!
The problem with the bed fish is that they are soooo skinny. We caught one that must have been 20 inches and it only weighed 2 pounds 4 ounces.
James,
The big you was a tube fish. Those things really put out the fish early in the season.
The weights have been way off for Minnetonka standards so far this year. Saturdays tournament was won with only 27lbs on 10 fish! If you told me you could win $8000 on Tonka and not average well over 3lbs per fish, I would have told you that you were crazy. The fish are so scattered right now that you can get them cranking, jigging, deep, shallow, etc, with no big numbers of big fish in any one spot.