Final Event Green Lake and Overall standings

[rjruda]

Congrats to Teng and his Partner on yesterday's big bag of fish. that Bass was a huge! Job job Steve and Brett for coming in second and taking the big fish pot with the monster pike.

It was a frustrating day for Terry and I as we managed to catch quite a few pike with our biggest coming as a cull fish 5 minutes before the end of the day but couldn't find any bass.

Congrats goes to Team Fish Cast for winning the overall league this year. Dan and Steve won Abu Garcia Veritas rods and Gen 3 Revo S reels. Call Me Cullen came in second by losing the tie breaker with Fish Cast, Scott and Shannon took home Abu Garcia Gen 3 Revo S reels. Bent Rods took 3rd, Rob and Terry walked away with Veritas Rods.

Thanks to everyone that fished this year. Also thanks to the officers that planned and ran a well organized league this year I really enjoyed fishing.

[rjruda]

MFL 2012 Final Overall.pdf

[Teng]

Thank You Rob and AI for making this another good year.
My friend Tou and I have never heard or even fished this lake til this event.Some of my other friends said this was a good lake but you know how fish stories go!

Our morning started off to the right of the launch. It was still kind of dark out so I didn;t know the water quality. I started off in the 3-4 ft waters over grass with a white and chartreus spinner. My friend was throwing a black top water buzz bait. Second cast, he had a good 2lb'er on. After about 5 minutes, he had another 2lb'er on the same buzz bait and I was still sitting at zero. We approached the 1st set of docks and I switched over to a brown and orange football jig. I quickly picked up a fat high 3 pounder jigging. I jigged the rest of the docks while my buddie did topwater. After we left that area, we went down further on the flat. I changed to a brown and orange spinner bait with a trailer. I ended up picking up our large pike from that area. We worked that area for about 20 minutes. Tou lost a big blow up, which seemed like a pretty big pike. We couldn't get him to bite again..
After that, we left the area and went to north green. Thats where we met saw Rob and the Yar team. I caught a few small bass there but nothing to add to the live well. I ended up catching a big fish on the spinner BUT being that I was using copolymer line, the fish was able to dig deep into the weeds and shake me off. That was disheartening.. We quickly learned that Rob had just verified a 6lb pike for team Yar. OUCH. We were falling behind. After that, we returned to the main lake and worked the flats. We quickly picked up two decent pikes. At this point, we had 3 pikes and 3 bass in the boat. and it was only about 9:30am. We then slowly worked the area and came upon the docks. The docks we worked were in 3-4 ft of water. First cast with my jig to the end of the dock produced what turned out to be the 5 pounder. We slowly worked the area and caught another four pounder. I lost another big 4-5 pounder on the docks and we lost a few big blow ups / bass in the weeds. This is why I hate using copolymer line but it has its advantages so I stuck with it.. by about 11:30 we had the bag we ended up weighing. I lost a few key bass and pikes that was disheartening but I didn't realize that we were the only ones on fish being that we had just seen a verified pike.. After 11:30, we just ran around the lake looking to cull the pikes. We didn't catch anything after 11:30

Tou ended up with just the two bass that he caught that morning. He caught a few other small ones but it didnt make the cull.

[Teng]

Oh.. An we didn't have a net. I lost my net in Medicine lake the weekend before so we landed everything by hand. YIKES.. wouldn't want to do that again!

[Steve Wood]

These were the results from Saturday's tournament on Green Lake (Chisago Cty):


Congratulations to Teng and his partner Tou for finding the bigger bass and for an excellent bag of fish. All of the teams caught some nice northern in this lake, but the bass were not so easy to find.

[Teng]

I think we had a 20-21lb 6 fish LM bass bag. Our pikes weren't that big

[Steve Wood]

Brett had fished this lake twice in a bass tournament quite a few years ago, but I had never been on Green Lake before and neither of us had a chance to pre-fish (it was 64 miles from my house in Savage by the way). We started out in some shallow areas on the south end fishing buzz baits and scum frogs in and around the lily pads. We generated zero interest with those offerings. Brett was mostly throwing a chatter bait with a crawfish trailer and he got bit off at the boat early by a good pike with some weight. He caught 3 bass around 13" and one 18" pike in that area on the chatter bait. I tried spinner baits, crank baits, buzz baits, and swim jigs in several flavors without any success other than having the tail bit off of one swim jig at the boat. We tried fishing the weed line on the east side of the lake in 8-10 feet of water for walleyes or northern using sucker minnows and a jig or spinner. That produced nothing at all and we gave up fairly quickly. We then fished the obvious bar on the west side of the lake again without results. It did appear there were some fish feeding on minnows in the shallow weedy areas, but we couldn't entice them to bite. We went back into the shallow weedy areas in the south end of the lake and caught 2 more small bass and two smaller northern (22 and 20") all on chatter baits. We finally got two bigger northern (35 and 27") on a 3/8 oz. charteuse spinner bait with gold blades. I tried all colors, weights, and sizes of spinner baits before finally getting lucky with 2 nice fish. Up until we caught the 2 bigger pike, we were having a pretty tough day of fishing and the chatter bait was the only thing we could get them to bite. I've had a chatter bait in my tackle box for years, but have hardly ever used it. This is something Brett fishes a lot in shallower water and I guess I learned something new to try when a spinnerbait isn't producing. They're not as weedless as a spinnerbait, but they seem to get through OK most of the time.

[Brett Vegoe]

It was fun fishing with you Steve. I wish I could have made it out at least once to pre-fish but just didn't have the time. I was really surprised that we couldn't find any larger bass. The area we concentrated on had everything they need for an early fall pattern. I think the only mistake we made was not to go right up to shore in the thick pads to see if the bigger bass could have been waiting for frogs there. I would have loved to have found a good jig bite going but I've had good days on bigger fish with the chatterbait too.

A tip for anyone who likes to fish spinnerbaits: If your not getting bit but you know the fish are there go to a small chatterbait with a trailer that will put out lots of movement at slow speeds. The secret is to work it as slowly as you can to get the thumping from the blade and just get it to tick the weeds or cover. It also seem to help if you crank with your rod tip pointed almost at the bait, if you hold at too big an angle you don't seem to get the same action. Not all chatterbaits work well at slow speeds. I will sometimes need to tie on 2 or 3 different baits before I find one that runs well slow. There are times when nothing else seems to work but they will hit a slowly worked chatterbait. They usually will hit small jigs too but you can cover more water with the chatterbait.

[Scum Frog]

Congratulations to Steve and Dan for their 1st place overall finish for the second year in a row!