MN Bass Opener Big Bag Challenge!!!

Here is the deal, my buddy Josh Douglas decided to do some fun fishing on Memorial Day, not practicing for a tournament, just going out and trying to really whack’em!!! But being the competitors that we are, we had to spice it up a little. We decided we would make it a team tournament, US vs. the Bass!!!

We picked a South Metro lake, calculated a loft goal, set that as our mark. Two guys, 6 hours, the goal….
Best 5 Bass = 20lbs. I told you, we had lofty goals!!! They sound familiar if you watched the episode of World’s Greatest Fishing Show where Zona and KVD set a 20lb goal on Lake St. Clair in the fall. Nobody said we were original.. LOL!!! Neither one of us would claim to be as talented as Kevin VanDam, but the antics that happen in our boats are not much different then you see on Mark Zona’s show.

We decided to fish out of Josh’s boat, we got to the landing and were fishing by about 8am. We started the day shallow, working inside week lines and pad clumps with weightless soft plastics. We quickly started getting bit, but the first few were the wrong size. Keepers but not the kind of fish that add up to 20lbs. A few more boat lengths down the bank, Josh gets a big fish on, but is snaps his fluorocarbon leader. The fish stayed there and we could see it. It was a real toad, we tried to get her to bite again, but nothing doing. In the next little cut, I had a pretty good fish hooked up on a 4″ Green Pumpkin Ring Fry, but sure enough I dumped here too. We continued to work the same patterns in similar areas and got a pretty quick limit, but it only weighed around 7lbs, time to start culling!!!

Pic of 4″ Green Pumpkin Ring Fry

Finally about an hour later I get the first nice fish in the boat, a definite 3lbs plus on the Ring Fry. From that point on, things slowly got better, we started putting better fish in the boat. Even though things were getting better, we both missed some more nice fish, that definitely could have helped our bag. At about noon, I got our biggest fish yet, it was a 4lb 7oz beauty. She took the Ring Fry as well, she was hanging on a stump in about 3ft of water. A beautiful fish, big head & healthy, but clearly spawned out. A week earlier and she was an easy 5 and she will be a 5lb fish later this summer when she starts putting the feed bag on. That fish gave us about 18lbs. We decided to head back to work that big fish from early this morning. We made long casts to the area, no bites, we got just close enough to see she was still there, but she was not having anything to do with us, we also saw one just as big about 20yds down the bank and neither one would humor us.

We then moved out to the main lake to work some smaller pockets and some rocky humps and shoals. I broke out my Tru-Tungsten Bluegill swimbait as I knew we needed a big bite to push us to our goal. No takes, but I was really impressed with the action. You will hear more about that bait this summer!!!! Josh then tried my TT Swimbait, so I picked up my Ima Shaker in Matte Bluegill and started working the rocks & weed clumps. I quickly boated a nice 2lb plus fish and then got a 3lb’r up to the boat on the Shaker, both nice fish, but not increasing our total. But I was impressed with the Shaker’s action and its quick return on investment

Pics of bigger fish

We finished up working some docks, wood & milfoil with Jigs and other baits, couple more fish, but no bigguns
We ended the day with 5 fish 18lbs 4oz, overall we must have caught around 30 bass, and had several more bites and saw other big fish cruising. Once again, it was frustrating too see so many big bass, but so many not in a catchable mood. I think all or all but one of our big 5 came on the Ring Fry, one may have been on a weightless tube. Had we not set the goal, we would have called the day a huge success, but we really wanted to get there, but still a great time. We both could have fished cleaner and we both believe we had the bites to meet our goal. I think you will see some more challenges like this in the future