Lake Minnetonka bass report 6-3-7

Well, its time for my first report on Minnetonka for the year. I’ll concentrate this report on this past friday and saturday. Friday I had the pleasure of taking out Adam and Fred out in search of some biting largies. I had them out twice last year and got on a good spring bite, so the pressure was on to repeat this year. We started out by cranking an outside weed point, but caught no bass. Adam did hook up a mid to upper 30" muskie that threw the crank on its second jump. We tried a couple other spots with minimal success. By this time the sun was up and we made a move to a spot I took these guys to last year about the same time and proceded to load the boat. These fish were in about 4′ and cruising looking for an easy meal. Blind casting a 4" Outkast Stickworm in either junebug or watermelon/red flake was the ticket. The 2 of them caught many fish with the average being about 2.5 lbs. Given the weights from a tourny earlier in the week, we were all quite happy. The bite in this area lasted for about 3-4 hours. Once the wind picked up a little bit and the clouds moved in, the bite died. We went in search of more fish and found a couple more, but than it was time to get off the lake so they could head north. Thanks for the fun guys, and I look forward to getting out this fall again!

Saturday my partner Scott Johnson and I were cautiously optimistic as is was the 28th Annual Minnetonka Classic Bass Tournament. There were 112 boats this year, and given our prefishing, we thought we could make the top 22 and pull a check. Scott had dialed in our starting spot Thursday. There was a boat in the area, but not on the spot and we were able to get where we wanted. His first cast with a crankbait put a fish in the boat. For the next 45 minutes or so we caught well over our limit or largemouth as well as numerous pike in the 4-6 lb range. As the sun rose, the crankbait bite slowed and we switched to a 3/32oz Outkast Money Jig with a Berkley Power Worm. We got another 6-8 fish this way before we had to make a move to a shallower spot to look to upgrade. Once shallow, the weightless Stickworms did the trick and culled 3 fish for us. We spent the rest of the day looking for that big bite that didn’t happen. We weighed 8 fish for 20.42 lbs and fininsh 11th. Congrats go out to Steve Lee and John Bird that weighed 26+ to win. It is the 3rd year in a row they have won!!

From talking with others that fished, it sounded like fish were caught doing almost everything. The key was finding the right sized fish.

I wanted to say a big thanks to Scott for weighing the fish, loading the boat, and taking care of everything by himself once we checked in at 3 so I could make a funeral at 4. It meant a lot to me and my family. The family was a little suprised to see me, but very excited when Scott called and said we ended up 11th. Thanks again!!