Ottertail County Minnesota Fishing Report June 8th

Tube and Topwater Bass on the Sand and in the Slop!

My wife, Tamara and I spent the past few days fishing a few Ottertail area Lakes, mainly West Battle, Clitherall, and Stalker Lakes. It appears the bass bite is on. We didn’t find any sumo-sized smallies on this trip but the numbers were excellent and the action was generally fast. The smallies were luvin’ tubes jigged on the scattered rocks and sand on Clitherall Lake. Fishing tubes is a blast. Read on to find out more…

I owe many thanks to Mr. Holst and Mr. Bluefleck for teaching me a few tube tricks that came in handy. There were times the smallies wanted the tube bouncing off the bottom pretty hard but there were also times they wanted it slowly dragged or even laying still on the bottom. The first smallie pictured picked the plastic off the bottom and just started running like mad. Another picked up the tube and headed for the boat so fast I could hardly reel fast enough to keep up. The second pic is Tamara with a nice bass that came from the slop on a scum frog.

Most of the bass we found were in the shallow waters, 3-7 feet. We did however find some largemouth as deep as 24 feet during the middle of the day. Jigging plastics worked for the deeper bass. We also spent some time in the slop chasing largemouth. Scum Frogs were the bait of choice for fishing the nasty stuff. I use 10lb fireline or 12 pound mono and tighten the drag a bit when fishing the pasture like this. Get that rod tip up and reel fast to keep the fish from burying in the weeds. You can see these bass were on the hammer feed by how deep they would bury the baits! Don’t forget to wait until you FEEL the fish before you set the hook. If you set the hook when you see the hit you’re likely to end up with a face full of scum frog or an angry wife with new ear-rings.

Of course, we had to spend a little time fishing walleye as well. The walleye seem to be well into their summer pattern on the Ottertail area lakes. We found eyes mainly in 16 to 24 feet of water. Jigging or pulling leeches on lindy rigs did the trick. This 17-incher came on a chart/orange jig and leech, verticle jiggling 22 fow. If anyone is interested in taking the kids out for a good time on the water the Rock Bass are on a mission. Just about any bait fished anywhere will work right now. Keep a few Rockies for the pan, please.

***Reminder*** Clitherall is catch-n-release on ALL smallies. Consider the catch-photo-release of larger fish of all species so we all get a chance to catch ’em again.