Clearwater June 25th Event 2 - Event conditions and techniques that worked

[Dan Wood]

June 25th, Clearwater Lake.

Light winds and clear sky for the Clearwater event - winds picked up a little as the day went on to maybe the 10 mph range. The sky remained clear and the temps became quite warm by the end of the day (80-90?). The water was still very clear on the lake with visibility 5+'. From our assessment, the bass were in the post spawn and the females seemed to have lock-jaw.

Techniques that worked (PLEASE add to this guys):

Bass:

Magic Stiks / senkos on the outside weed edges
What didn't work for us at least - topwater

Pike:

Spinnerbaits (white on weed edges)

Walleye:

no walleyes were weighed in at this event

[Tubes]

Are walleyes kind of a whoops fish in your league? I don't think I've seem one measured yet..... :D

[Dan Wood]

Walleyes are a tough fish in our league. They just aren't that easy to come by in the metro with any size... It is a trade-off I guess - get some big weight in bass early in the a.m. or go for walleye and try for the bonus. Most go for the weight.

[Tubes]

That makes sense :)

[MikeDebner]

Ted and I picked up our pike on spinnerbaits on deeper(8-15) weedlines. Most of our bass came on case magicsticks carolina rigged. We had a tough time in the early morning and picked up most of our bass between 9:00-11:00am.

Mike Debner

[Dan Wood]

Mike,
how do you guys rig those carolina? just curious as I've never fished that particular bait carolina style. t-rigged? what weight sinker, length of leader, etc. Looking back, we would have fished more weighted baits that get down a little quicker including jigs. The fish were clearly on the deep edges.

[Steve Wood]

By far the majority of fish Dan and I caught came from deeper water (>4 ft). Most were either in deep weed pockets or out at the deep weedline in 10-15 ft depth. Our strategy going in was to fish buzz baits and scum frogs to find the bigger bass, but it wasn't working and we wasted too much time trying to make it work. What I wish we had tried was a jig 'n pig or other weighted plastic along the outer weed edges. We mostly used an unweighted wacky worm which takes a long time to drop in deep water so I'm sure we weren't always getting down deep enough.

Dan and I did catch one break during the day when another angler who was fishing walleyes with a Lindy rig and a leech complained of catching only northern. I told him that we were in a multi-species tournament and would love to catch a few of those. He pointed to a shoreline across the bay from where we were that yielded at least 6 or 7 legal fish for us. We lost at least 4 others including a good one that we got up close enough to see. We didn't try a leech in that spot at all and only breifly elsewhere, but I wish we had worked that a little more in retrospect. The walleye fisherman we spoke to had released a 32" northern that morning.

It was a bummer that Dan and I had to take a dead fish penalty because we released at least 3 twins to the northern that died in the live well and could have easily kept another live one. We've never had a problem before, but I guess when you get 9 fish in the live well on a warm day, the intermittant aeration setting isn't enough. We'll consider this a "lesson learned" and we won't be making that mistake again.

[rjruda]

Our frist two bass hit on a buzz bait in shallow water. the other bass we caught all came on spinnerbaits. We had a limit by 8:00 with a few upgrades. But we couldn't find a pike. We threw spinnerbaits and cranks along the breaks and couldn't find anything.

One minus was we couldn't get the big motor to start after we hit our second spot, so that limited us to using to trolling motor only. We spent the last 3 hours working our way back from the south end.

We'll see you all on Marion

[Mike Lentz]

I ended up landing 3 of our 5 Bass on Scum Frogs in the lilypads. We missed a few more that way and I anticipate using that method again down the road. Dan or anybody else, Brian and I will be out on Marion Tuesday night and I'll be out there with my wife this Friday checking things out.... if you have time to get out you should join us on Tuesday.

[Lance Bainville]

Our Bass came on some sort of plastic ie. Senkos, Case plastics, or Berkley power worms.Majority were caught t-rigged and wacky style along the deep weed edge.The northerns were caught on crankbaits. Tex did have a nice northern up to the boat, but it got off.I would estimate it would've gone 7+lbs.We did see a few bigger bass but couldn't coax them into biting.

[Ted Knutson]

Dan I was using the smallest mojo weight I could find i think 1/16oz. with a 2 1/2 foot flouro leader with a bead separating the weight from the swivel. I use the swivel when I'm fishing this way because it really helps with line twist. I also think the weight clanking against the bead draws a little attention to the lure and helps keep the sunfish off your plastics.