Forest Lake, MN bass report 7-24-05

Our bass club held a tournament on Forest Lake sunday. Since I did not have any time to prefish, I was fishing memories. The day started off overcast so I decided to start on a sharp break close to shore that had some good green coontail and milfoil on it. I marked lots of baitfish suspended, but only managed 1 pike and a break off. Next we moved to a shallow area with lots of pads and a few reeds. We threw frogs in the pads, but did not even get 1 blow up. We did manage to pick up a few fish out of the reeds Texas rigging a 4" weightless Outkast Stickworm.

Once the sun came out and the skies cleared we moved to a stretch of docks that had been productive in the past. In short order I had a limit, although it was small. Again these fish came on the same weightless stickworm. With the clear water, darker colors worked best. For those that have not fished Forest, the shoreline areas are very shallow quite a ways from shore and for the most part all clean sand. There are also a lot of muskies cruising the deeper water, so the majority of the bass get pushed shallow. By the end of the day we both had a limit. I caught over 20 legal fish, with many short fish as well. There were 2 key areas on the docks that were holding fish. The first key were the pontoons, and the second were tires.

Congrats to Clyde for winning out of the back of the boat! Next time I don’t plan to come up 1 oz shy!

The storm that rolled through saturday really messed up the north east access as well. As of sunday afternoon there were still large branches blocking part of the main access area. There were also many branches down in peoples yards and there were parts of docks floating, so keep an eye out!