Leech Lake (East) – Club Tournament #7 – August 19, 2006 | Rich Lindgren's Bass Fishing & Bassin' Blog

We launched out of the Sugar Pt landing on Boy Bay, I was fishing alone. I was last out, so I just got my rods ready and put some scent on my jigs while everyone took off. I was not in a hurry, because I did not no where I was going. I knew that I had caught fish in the reeds on the west side and that there is supposed to be some good bog in Boy Bay and then there is plenty of Wild Rice to fish. My plan was to head towards the back of Boy bay where the river connects and watch for something that caught my eye.

Very quickly I spotted a small rice island on my right, I pulled in and pitched my jig around for about 5 minutes, decided this is not what I wanted and left. I then headed straight across where it looked like some rice faded into bog and it was calm so I could work a topwater. On my 3rd cast with a Black Bronzeye I caught a keeper, probably 2lbs. Then a few cast later I got a 2nd, just tossing into the pockets and edges of the rice. I then started alternating between the Bronzeye and black Gambler Cane Toad. I rigged the Cane Toad on a 4/0 Wide Gap and then used a 1/16oz Tru-Tungsten T-rig weight in the nose. I quickly lost the cane toad to a muskie and went back to the Bronzeye. I then got one more on the frog, then missed one. Shortly there after, I converted a missed frog fish with a weightless Green Pumpkin Lake Fork Ring Fry, I used two 8mm Tru-Tungsten Force Beads as weight loosely held in place with a bobber stop.

I tried fishing some 3/4oz and 1oz jigs in the shallow rice, but they were to heavy for this area, so I tied on a 3/8oz Tru-Tungsten Jig in a Sunfish Pattern and tipped it with an Alabama Craw colored NetBait Paca Chunk. On my 2nd pitch I missed one and a few pitches later bagged my 5th keeper. I probably had right around 10lbs, so I started moving quicker and hopping around and I wanted to look for bigger fish. I caught one small keeper off a log with the Ring Fry, tried some reeds, bog & rice, not much luck.

Click Jig for Details
I then hopped down to a point with a little wind blowing into it and there looked to be some mats in the middle of it. I started flipping my Sunfish Jig and caught a couple that culled. I then sat down and retied the Black Cane Toad and started fan casting the sparser areas of rice. Within 10 casts, I boated 3 nice keepers and 2 of them culled fish. Too make a long story short, I slowly worked this island the rest of the entire day, which was about 5 hrs and boated 20+ keepers on jigs and cane toads. I believe that 3 of my keepers were on the jig, including the biggest fish (4.5lbs) and two resulted from the Cane Toads crawled like a buzzbait though the rice. They were really eating the frogs, I bet I kooked 8-9 out of 10 on topwater frogs, what a great ratio.

Another boat joined me for about 3.5 hours and they each showed up with 2 keepers each and they ended up with 16.6 and 16, including the years big fish at 6lbs. My total for the day was 19.4 lbs and was the winning bag. It gave me a very comfortable lead going into the last tournament of the year which was the next day on the west side of Leech Lake. I also advance to the final day of Match Championship. Obviously I was very happy with the day, and it was better than I could have hoped for not practicing that side at all and not have been there for 11 years. I said afterward, I would be happy if it was half that good tomorrow . All 10 guys brought in 5 bass limits, with the smallest being 10.2lb. Great Tournament!