Lake Minnewaska Bass

Each year the Zumbro Valley Bassmasters of Rochester holds a two-day tournament in September. This year we choose Lake Minnewaska in Polk County Minnesota. It’s an eight thousand acre lake with Glenwood on the east end and Starbuck on the west end. The lake has both large and smallmouth and a record of huge weights in tournaments. In normal years both the shallow and deep bites are productive. However, the drought in central Minnesota has the lake about three feet below normal, wiping out the shallow bite. This report is the collective information of my experience and information from the club members.

We had solid information that flipping heavier vegetation along the weedline was a reliable pattern. The photo is of the first fish in pre-tournament practice. That fish sold my partner and I so it was a mater of duplicating the pattern of finding the heaviest coontail and northern milfoil beds along the outer edge of the weedline. Because lake maps and sonar do not show vegetation density it was a matter of putting the trolling motor down and fishing. The fish were aggressive so it was easy to cover water. Most of the fish hit a craw tube on the first drop flipped with a heavy weight. A rattletrap also showed us a couple key areas. What we found was the north side of the lake had most of our “right stuff”. The south side had more sand and sparser weedlines and most of the smallmouth. My partner and I didn’t spend much time on the south side but the guys that did had several different patterns. Both large and smallmouth came on heavy jigs and tubes flipped into the weedlines. Some quality smallmouth were also caught suspended of the weedline and sand edges as long as they dropped into deep water. A one-ounce spinnerbait slow rolled outside of the weedline put several 18 inch pulse smallmouth in the boat.

Because Minnesota has fall catch and release only season on smallmouth the club agreed to have a weigh-in on Saturday (largemouth only) and a measure and release tournament on Sunday. Saturdays winning weight was 14.5 lbs with a big fish of 4.35 lbs. Sunday recorded several smallmouth in the mid 19” range. Using a standard length to pound conversion the winning weight was estimated at just under 18 pounds. The bad news is we (the club) didn’t get a chance to see or photograph the fish. High south winds on both days hampered fishing.

For anyone looking to catch some quality bass I’d highly recommend Minnewaska. Although we didn’t target walleye many of the guys caught them. I did catch one on a spinnerbait in 6 FOW that went around six pounds. The few northerns we caught were