Sugar Lake Event

[Steve Wood]

The second MFL event of the year will be held this Saturday (July 14th) on Sugar Lake in Wright County. The event will start and end at the south landing off of 106th St. and will run from 6 AM until 2 PM.

We have 6 teams entered for this event so the payouts will be $180 for 1st place, $90 for 2nd, and $30 for 3rd. An optional pot of $5/team will be collected at the landing for big fish.

Note that special DNR regulations apply at this event. Northern from 24 to 36" must be immediately released and do not count towards team weight. (They can count as a species point if photographed with a staple item).

The next event will be August 4th on Minnetonka and there will be one more event on September 8th on a lake we plan to select this weekend. Team entries are still being accepted for the August and September events at $50/team/event. Advance registration and payment is required.

[Teng]

Looking forward to it!! Since its only me, it should be interesting!

[a10lbeye]

Fun event for sure!
Congratulations to Scott and Shannon on another nice bag and 5 bonus species (wow), and Dan and Steve with the big fish honors. And Teng and Mrs. Teng for a well deserved SECOND place finish.

[Teng]

Actually, we took second.;-)

Now i just need to teach the wife how to catch the bonus fishes :-)

[Steve Wood]

Fun event for sure!
Congratulations to Scott and Shannon on another nice bag and 5 bonus species (wow), and Dan and Steve with the big fish honors. And Teng and Mrs. Teng for a well deserved third place finish.

Brent, Teng finished in 2nd and their team had the highest bag weight. Dan and I were a lb. behind them in third. I'll try to get the results up later today.

[Steve Wood]

Congratulations to Scott and Shannon for their second consecutive first place finish. Five bonus points shows their understanding of what it takes to win in this league. For event photos see the MFL website at: http://mnmfl.com/



Dan and I caught 6 or 7 bass in the first half hour and kept 4 between 12 and 13". After about an hour of fishing that spot we tried an area along the east shoreline that held a concentration of nice bass in a fairly small area about 13' deep. Dan was catching a fish on every cast with a crawfish jig for a while and we filled our limit and upgraded all the ones we had kept earlier in that one spot. We only caught one northern there though and it was over the slot limit. After that spot cooled down and the bass weren't getting any bigger, we tried fishing the deep weed line for walleyes or northern. We eventually got one keeper size pike, but basically spent the rest of the day trying to catch the second or third northern between 20 and 24". We had at least a 7 or 8 fish under 20" for our efforts. We never got time to specifically target the bonus species as we figured adding one or two northern was our best bet to gain points. We had an 8.5" sunfish and quite a few rock bass bite while we were fishing for bass, northern, and walleye. I'm attaching the photo of Dan's 4.0 lb. bass which won big fish (only because of the slot limit on northerns at Sugar Lake).
I would like to hear from Scott and Shannon how they managed to find their 5 bonus species. I would thing that finding a crappie is no easy task on any given day in the middle of summer and they've done it twice in a row now. Fess up guys!

[Scum Frog]

Although we had never fished the lake, we had heard from enough people that the bass on the lake ran small. We figured that the pike and the bonus species would probably be the difference. Ten minutes into our first spot, we caught a pike in the slot...it came on a chrome/blue lipless crankbait in about 8 f.o.w. After catching a bunch of bass, we managed one more slot pike in the same area at about 8 am. While the bass fishing continued to be good, we were unable to catch any more pike. However, Shannon went on a run with his 2" tube jig and caught the sunfish, crappie, perch, and rock bass in a very short amount of time.
It started when tiny perch were follwing my rattle trap to the boat. Shannon was able to catch one, maybe 3" long but it worked. The sunfish was caught in the same place, both in 5 f.o.w. in a weedy area. The Crappie was suspended in about 13 f.o.w. We kept seeing medium sized fish on the graph. Shannon was pretty convinced they were crappies, and it only took him a few minutes to pull up the 11" fish and prove himself correct. The bullhead I actually spotted while we were up the shallows (3 f.o.w.). Again, Shannon pulled out the tube and somehow got the fish to commit. So I guess you could say that we actually caught the bullhead by sightfishing...unbelievable!
Later in the day we moved to a deep weedline and caught numerous pike on parrot colored Rapala DT's. The fish were in 13-17 feet of water and were fairly abundant and easy to catch once we located them.
We certainly would have liked to have found the larger bass that Teng and the Woods caught (nice fish guys!), but we had a lot of fun and snuck by with our bonus fish.

[a10lbeye]

Actually, we took second.;-)

Now i just need to teach the wife how to catch the bonus fishes :-)

Sorry Man!! I should try and pay more attention...

[Teng]

Sorry Man!! I should try and pay more attention...

Not a problem =)

[Teng]

The wife and I started fishing the left cattails after the launch. I figured they were probable eating or going to eat so I we moved in between the cattails and the exposed weeds. After about 10 minutes, I hooked into the 2.4lb lm bass tossing a tungsten spinner with a trailer. A few cast later, I caught another 2.7oz lm bass. "This was when Rob had asked me what I caught".I found out later, that my scale is about .3 oz off as it was my big fish and was weighed at 2.4oz. As we went around the corner, I landed a 23" pike. By this time, I've seen enough baitfish swimming around to know that they were going to be fish food eventually throughout the day. We worked the lilly pad with a swimjig. My mistake was using fluro. I lost a piggy in the lilly pads so I put that rod away. While switching rods, I saw a 30+ inch pike just sitting there looking up. We spooked it so I figured it wouldn't bite and I know it was not the size we needed so I left it alone. We then picked up and we across the lake to the east side. Caught 13" bass there.. Long ways to run just to catch a small bass... We then went up north and to the left. That was where we caught the rock bass. I was jigging the spinner for the rock bass. After that, I told the wife that its pointless to run around the lake and that we should just go back to where we had the earlier success. She agreed. We went back to the cattails and slowed down the presentation. She caught a bass and a 21" pike to contribute to the bag. By 1:30, we had 2 pikes and 4 bass in the boat. I then switched to my secret swimjig, the one that always produces for me, and pitched deep into the cattail pockets. I ended up picking up another 2 bass, one was another 2lb'er and the other one was a high 1lb'er. With my 6 bass, I was at about 12lbs or so and then the 3 pikes made up the rest. My pikes were 23,23 and 21.

Oh, and I did end up catching that earlier pike. It went 8lbs and was 31" inches.

[Teng]

We literally used only two lures for this lake. A swim jig and a spinner because the bass and pikes were chasing bait fish.

[Dan Wood]

That was a great choice of lakes guys.. Neither my Dad or I had fished that lake and glad we had the chance to. It is a neat lake and loaded with fish.. We started with swim jigs and cranks in the morning and picked up fish like my Dad said.. pike were short and the bass were small at our first spot.. we had a few for the livewell but nothing we wanted to keep.. we moved to spot #2 at 7 a.m. We found some good rocks at our 2nd spot and caught the bass on a 3/4 oz football jig and berkley chigger craw.. We found the fish a bit after 7:30 or so and culled all of our bass and filled the rest of our limit with 14+ and the kicker.. My Dad had a pike over the slot in that same area.. As tempting as it was to fish bass longer, we played the odds and moved on to fish pike and walleye. We spent the rest and good portion of the day fishing pike and walleye with little to show for it. 1 pike that was 20.75 and a bunch of short pike.. we lost a lot of fish, just too many mistakes..

[Teng]

My wife and I must've seen over 5 muskies in less then 4ft of water while the muskie guys were trying for them out in at the drops. Thats one thing that I will never get is why muskie fishermen don't fish shallow for muskies in the mornings?

[Teng]

we moved to spot #2 at 7 a.m. We found some good rocks at our 2nd spot and caught the bass on a 3/4 oz football jig and berkley chigger craw..

How do you recognize rocks on the fishfinders?

[Dan Wood]

The side imaging Humminbird is good for finding rocks as long as you are outside of the weeds.. that lake is really rocky with all of the steep drops and pts... all of the pts we fished had rocks in some places anyway.. most areas were getting fished a lot though and had a lot of dinks.. this one we hadn't seen anyone fish anyway.. The jig helped with the size, I tried a drop shot some and was getting super dinks.. I don't think we had any under about 13 with that larger jig, at least not many if we did.. The side imaging didn't help on this spot since we hadn't fished it and didn't drive over it at all.. We were casting it with cranks and swim jigs one pass through and another pass back.. probably 30 minutes or longer with nothing or very little anyway to show for it.. We were about ready to call it and move on when I decided to try the football jig as a last attempt before we left the area... Caught one on the first cast I think before it hit the bottom or right away after if it did... every cast after that.. I would miss a fish once or even twice and a third fish would grab it before the jig made it back to the boat.. I should of had a heavier rod with that heavy of a jig in deep water, like I said we missed too many fish.. it was a lot of fun though, jig fishing is by far my favorite..

So you guys did see some muskies, you must not have been there when we were talking about it.. didn't sound like anyone else saw any.. any big ones? we saw one early in the morning in about 4-5 fow.. it was maybe 38" or so.. 15 lbs. maybe.

[Teng]

Yeah we saw alot of muskies. One even followed my swimjig to the boat. Ive caught many muskies in my days and i can honestly say that these muskies were the biggest ive ever seen in person. If i had to guess, the biggest one was pushing upper 40's and thick. But i figure by the time u see them theyve already seen you and are spooked so it was pointless to try to catch them. Plus witht this warm water it takes them longer to recover

[Dan Wood]

upper 40's and you were worrying about them recovering? I have caught them by sight a couple times when bass fishing by dropping a bass jig on their nose.. makes for a good fight but you need to go after them with the trolling motor..

Yeah we saw alot of muskies. One even followed my swimjig to the boat. Ive caught many muskies in my days and i can honestly say that these muskies were the biggest ive ever seen in person. If i had to guess, the biggest one was pushing upper 40's and thick. But i figure by the time u see them theyve already seen you and are spooked so it was pointless to try to catch them. Plus witht this warm water it takes them longer to recover

[Teng]

Yeah they have a harder time recovering with the warmer water. The wife and i were just amazed on how they were just suspended there in 2 ft of water just lounging arounds while the muskie guys were out in 10+ft of water

[a10lbeye]

Hey Dan,
so when you fish clear water like we had on Sugar do you use a braid when jig fishing or do you go with Mono or Flouro?

[Uncle Smash]

. Plus witht this warm water it takes them longer to recover

Thanks for leaving them be Teng. Survival rates drop for these big girls when the water temps get too hot. once we start seeing temps consistantly in the 80's, with no over night relief, I quit fishing them.

Even if one can get the fish to swim off it doesn't mean they survived and it takes nearly 2 decades to replace that upper 40's fish.

I haven't fished the metro for muskies in many weeks due to the water temps and appreciate your concern for the resource Teng. THANKS!