Saturday morning was Gopher Bassmasters 5th tournament out of 8 this year. We launched out of Maxwell bay public ramp on famed Lake Minnetonka. Minnetonka is an interesting lake for me, I know its one of the best bass fisheries in the world, yet i rarely make it out there. It really seems unless I have a tournament out there, which is rarely, I don’t venture out that way. I really did not practice for this tournament, other then a guide trip that i had back on July 4th.
My partner was David Larsen and this was his first time even on Tonka, so I was kind of winging it and kind of fishing on a few distant memories for this club tournament. We decided to start on a set of marina docks, this place has a history of giving up some big bites, but all we caught were a few barely legals and shorts there. I threw back 2 or 3 fish that were probably keepers that I did not want to waste time culling later and David boxed one small keeper there on a Ring Fry. One cool thing that happened there, was that I had a small keeper on and about a 6-7# Northern grabbed the fish right after I set the hook and knocked the fish off my jig. About 5 minutes later, David had to wrestle his keeper away from that same northern. Then about 15 minutes later, I had another 12-13″ bass on and 8-10lb musky grabbed it and we literally had to nudge the muskie with my net to get him to let go of it, I ended up throwing that bass back because he looked like he would have died in my livewell.
It seemed like the fish could be active, but we were in the wrong area. So we headed to some milfoil spots in Crystal Bay. I caught a small keeper on a smoke purple flake senko on an inside weed edge, I was getting a little concerned, so I threw him in the well. We then dropped out into the deeper edge and nothing. We then fished a couple inside milfoil turns on another spot in Crystal, more shorts there.
We then hit a stretch of docks in Crystal, I got bit off 3 times, Dave lost a decent fish, I lost one and then finally with my brand new JKruz Storm sunglasses I spotted a shadow next to a dock pole that looked like a fish. Flipped my tube in there and sure enough, that was my second keeper bass. I also picked up another small keeper on a watermelon Swim jig along that stretch. Dave had another fish on briefly by the channel to Maxwell, but I think it surprised him and it evaded him.
Things were not looking good, so we ran to Wayzata bay to a milfoil stretch that had always been pretty good to me. We got a few short fish right away, then I caught a small keeper on 4″ green pumpkin senko, we then hit an adjacent dock and I was able to get my 5th keeper on a Green Pumpkin tube. At that point, I am guessing I had about 6lbs 
Not the sack that one looks for on Minnetonka. We fished that weedline a little more, then we hit another inside turn that I had discovered on my guide trip. I actually caught 3 or 4 fish pretty quickly there, one of them being a 3.4lb largemouth and at least one other that made a small cull. That fish lifted my spirits at least temporarily. Time was starting to run short, so we ran back to Crystal to fish some docks before time ran out. The first dock yielded another small keeper that was a small cull for me on a 3/8oz Texas Craw Tru-Tungsten jig. 3 or 4 docks later, Dave caught a nice 2lb fish on a ring fry and it was time to go. We made it to the landing with 10 seconds to spare.
We definitely struggled as a boat, my fish only weighed 8.8lbs and placed me 11th out of 24 guys at this tournament, actually finished higher then one would think with that weight on Tonka, but several other guys struggled as well. I guess the good thing is that we stuck with it and both caught some good fish at the end to turn a complete embarrassment into a slightly more bearable disappointment. The good news, is we were fishing Tonka the very next day out of Gray’s bay for club tournament #6, so I was going to have a chance to redeem myself and get revenge on the Tonka bass.
Rich
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