A couple weeks ago I had my first club tournament of the year on Lake Independence in the northwest metro. My club had already fished two tournaments in Wisconsin prior to this event, but I was unable to fish them since I was still at school. This tournament was the first weekend that I was back from school so I didn’t have any time to pre-fish, nor had I ever been on the lake before. Needless to say, I hadn’t a clue of where to go, but it ended up being alright.
If you can recall the weekend of June 6th was a cold and wet one. I don’t think the temps got about 55 degrees and you could see fog coming off the water in certain areas all day long because the water was warmer than the air for a good part of the day. I had good rain gear and luckily brought a warm hat, but another layer of clothing and some gloves would have done me some good!
I started off fishing a cattail island that was close to the YMCA island. It was surrounded with shallow water and thick milfoil. It didn’t look to productive because of the lack of deeper water close by so I made a move to some docks close by. After cruising down a row of docks without a bite it was time for another change. I moved across the lake to a slop and pad filled bay. The water was noticeably clearer here and looked much more productive. On about my third cast in the area I landed a decent keeper. I proceeded to fish the bay with a frog, swim jig, spinnerbait, and a t-rigged beaver. I ended up filling out my limit with a bunch of runts and also lost a couple good fish on a frog that may have helped. After getting through the bay I continued down the bank to some other pads that had some good wind blowing into them. I caught two more keepers on a spinnerbait on that bank and was able to cull for a couple ounces.
After fishing the windblown bank I moved to a spot behind the YMCA island and started pitching a blk/blue t-rigged tube in the cattails. After a couple minutes I laid into a nicer fish. It ended up being about 2.75lbs and my best fish of the day. I continued to pitch the cattails thinking that I was finally on to some better fish, but it never panned out.
I ended the day with about 8.5lbs which was good enough for 2nd place. I wasn’t too pleased with my bag, but I can’t complain with that for never being on Independence before and especially under the colder conditions.
Fishing Report/Update: I’ve been fishing the south metro lakes quite a bit the last couple weeks since I’ve been back from Iowa and have still been finding fish shallow until about the last week or so. My best lures have been swim jigs and plastic stick baits on the inside weed lines. I’ve caught some fish in deep water on jig worms and texas rigged beavers but it’s been very sporadic. I’m looking forward to this hot weather to continue which should help in getting the fish stacked up on the deeper summer spots. It will also put some stability in other shallow water patterns throughout the lakes such as docks, pads, and slop.
Stay tuned for another entry sometime this week. I fished an ABA tournament this weekend and will be sure to let you know how it goes!
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