Metro Hawg Hunters Team Lahr review from the July 12th tournament on Lake Waconia, MN.

The 4^th stop on the Metro Hawg Hunters schedule brought us to Lake Waconia on July 12^th.  This lake is a great all around fishing lake that receives a ton of pressure from walleye, muskie, panfish, and bass anglers alike.  Also, the recreational boat traffic can be very heavy at times.  Waconia is not a huge lake by any means, but can be kind of intimidating because of the expansive weed flats and a decent amount of shallow cover.  We had a warm week leading up to the tournament and the forecast was for hot, humid weather with heat indexes over 100 degrees the day of the derby.  Given the conditions, we were hoping for a good deep water bite. 

My partner, Spencer, and I spent a few hours on the lake the day before the tournament checking deep weedlines, but we also spent some time up shallow looking at a few docks and slop areas.  We caught fish on points and inside turns off the flats, but we also found a few around docks.  No giants, just decent fish.  If we rolled one on a spot, we would just mark it and leave, not knowing for sure the quality of fish that lived there.  We decided to start on a short stretch of docks right away in the morning, just to make sure we weren’t missing anything.  

The morning of the tourney was warm, humid, and cloudy.  We were the last boat out of the gate, but we reached our dock area without any company.  Our hopes were that the overcast conditions might make for a decent shallow bite.  After catching a quick limit of small fish, Spencer and I wrote off the shallow cover and decided to fish deep the rest of the day.  We flew up to the north end where I had lost a 3-pounder the previous day.  It was a steep drop off the end of a flat.  We culled up a couple of times with 2-pounders and then I hooked something more substantial.  At first I thought I might have had a pike or muskie, but when my line started coming up we knew it was a bass.  After a heart-stopping jump and 3 runs under the boat, we got it in the net.  The fish went 20 inches even and we had a kicker!!  Now, we needed to find something to go with it.  We spent the rest of the day running that pattern and consistently catching fish with a nice one mixed in here and there.  I caught a 3-1/2 pounder off a point on the south end and a 4 pounder off a hard bottom point on the west end.  We went back to that same point with about an hour to go and ran into a fired up school of bass.  Spencer caught a 3-1/2 pounder in the last half hour to push our total weight up to a point where we felt like we might be able to make a run at a win. 

The weights were very tight between the four teams at the top.  Spencer and I weighed a 5-fish limit for 18.94 pounds which on this day was only good enough for 4^th place.  Lee Farber and Jeff Lueck were the winners with 19.52 pounds.  Obviously, there were some big fish weighed in, but our 5.32 pound brute ended up being big fish of the day.

Here is a list of our most productive baits:

·       3/8oz All-Terrain Finesse Jig (green pumpkin) with matching twin tail grub

·       5” whacky-rigged Senko (various colors) fished on a VMC whacky jighead (1/8oz)

·       1/8oz All-Terrain Mighty Jig with a 7” Berkley Power Worm (various colors)

·       Drop Shot – Zoom Finesse Worm (watermelon/red flake) fished on a #1 VMC Spinshot hook with a 1/4oz dropshot weight

·       1/2oz All-Terrain Football Head Jig (watermelon/red) with a 4” Berkley Chigger Craw (green pumpkin)

Our last tournament of the regular season takes place Friday, July 24 on Lake Minnetonka.  The points race is tight and only the top 5 teams make the Tournament of Champions in September.  For updated results, standings, and more information about our club check out our website at metrohawghunters.com.

Team Lahr (Brad and Spencer)

             

Metro Hawg Hunters Kenny Weyandt gives his review of their latest tournament on Clearwater Lake in Annandale, MN.

An important thing Adam and I have learned is trying to estimate what it will take to win because that should factor in how you approach a lake. We felt like 14lbs + would be a strong weight and our other two tourneys here we only weighed 12lbs so we knew we had to take some risks. 

Another thing that we have learned in tournament fishing over the past few years  is you only need 5 good fish and you typically find them in heavy cover in MN lakes. With that in mind we threw out all our previously fished spots and sort of just flew by the seats of our pants. 

We started on reeds/bullrushes up shallow flipping and frogging. Not a lot of fish but put one in the boat that was just under 3lbs on a frog. As the sun came up we began to push deeper and fished some rocks but found nothing. As we worked back to our next spot we worked a steep drop off with nice cover. Adam was rigged wacky and I was flipping a jig. Adam caught a couple from the back of the boat that were just under 3lbs. That got me thinking to slow down and possibly dead stick a little. 

Our next spot that same pattern seemed to work. Although I was flipping an edge with a black/blue 1/2 ounce Flammin Jig I was letting it sit on the bottom for 5-7 seconds and sure enough, that's when our biggest of the day came at 3.4lbs!

We continued that pattern and Adam caught one last one over 3lbs using a weightless wacky rig again which we though would put us over 14lbs. We went to flipping patches of milfoil to see if we could find one over 4lbs but no suck luck. 

Much like last tournament we did not catch a ton of fish and actually didn't have a limit until almost 10am. We headed into weigh in and realized that not one keeper came on a spot that we have ever fished before. 

Total weighed in at 14.34lbs which was half a pound behind Jeff and Lee. We knew these league points would be crucial because our next two lakes (Waconia/Tonka) have not been very friendly for us. 

Last time it took almost 20 pounds to win Waconia and the only time we fished it we weighed 12lbs so looks like we have our work cut out for us again! 

Kenny and Adam

Team Lahr of Metro Hawg Hunters breakdown their latest tournament on the Clearwater Chain in Annandale, MN

The Clearwater Chain is a very familiar to my fishing partner/brother, Spencer and I.  We’ve had some good finishes out there, including a couple of wins.  Because the chain is fed by the Clearwater River, water levels and clarity can change quickly, as has been the case this spring.  In May, the lakes in the chain were low and gin clear, but with recent rains, lake levels have risen and the water has a stain to it.  We’ve also had warm, stable weather the past couple of weeks which has pushed water temps into the low-80’s.  The spawn is complete and the fish are migrating toward their traditional summertime locales. 

Spencer and I each spent a few hours prefishing and found that the deeper weeds, especially the cabbage, is either behind schedule or non-existent.  We spent the majority of our prefishing time checking deep breaks for any signs of green weed growth.  We ended up finding 8 or 10 spots to rotate through and with the limited fishing we did, each of us caught a 4-pounder.  There are two sayings we like to throw around when describing Clearwater:

1

.                  95% of the fish are in 5% of the water.

2         You absolutely have to catch a 4-pounder to have any chance of winning.

The morning started warm, but cloudy with a slight breeze.  We drew boat 7 for takeoff and were able to make it up to our starting spot first.  This was an area with a sharp dropoff that ran near the reeds.  It has a hard bottom and scattered vegetation off the break.  The majority of our spots fit the same description.  We put 5 keepers in the boat within the first 40 minutes with the biggest going 2-1/4 pounds.  After pulling up to our second spot, we combined to catch 6 keepers in 6 casts and swung at least 15 over the rail in just a few minutes.  That pushed our total weight into the 10-11 pound range.  Then, the sun came out and the wind died down completely.  The deeper fish seemed less affected by the change.  Spencer and I hoped if we hit enough spots and ran through enough fish, we would end up with 5 nice ones.  We narrowed our rotation down to about 4 spots and hit them periodically throughout the day.  Some of the schools were holding in areas only 3 boat-lengths long.  After returning to a spot, sometimes we needed to change up baits or colors to fire them up again.  We culled up a few ounces at a time all day long and boated in the neighborhood of 40-60 fish, but our boat never ran into a pod of those 3.5 to 4 pounders that it takes to win. Spencer and I ended up finishing 3^rd with 13.27 pounds, a pound and a half behind the winners, Lee Farber and Jeff Lueck.  Considering we never caught that elusive kicker fish, we were happy to escape with a third place finish.

Here’s a list of our most productive baits:

·       5/16oz All-Terrain Swim jig (black/blue) with a matching 4” twin tail grub

·       Jigworm – 1/8oz All-Terrain Mighty Jig with a 7” Berkley Power Worm (various colors)

·       5” Senko – wacky rigged, weighted and unweighted (various colors)

·       3/8oz All-Terrain Finesse Jig (green pumpkin) with matching 4” twin tail grub

Our next Metro Hawg Hunters tournament takes place on July 12^th at Lake Waconia.  For updated results, standings, and more information about our club check us out at metrohawghunters.com.

-Team Lahr (Brad & Spencer)