Blackhawk Skunk

Posted by MNAngler On May - 24 - 2010

Last Friday, I was volunteering to help setup for an event not far from work, but we couldn’t start until 9pm. Since I live a half hour away, I decided to check out one of the FiN lakes near my office instead of going home and coming back out again. I checked with Matt to see if he was available and we ended up at Blackhawk Lake in Eagan.

We started fishing off the fishing pier. The problem was that there was thick weeds and algae all around the dock. The algae was so thick in spots, they made hard flats on the surface. Left and right of the dock, there were only a few holes to cast into. Straight out, there was more open water, but the weeds and algae were just under the surface. We pulled in gunk on almost every cast.

I tried a bubble gum fluke, classic orange Daredevil, orange/brown spinner bait, and topwater scum frog. Matt went smaller with little baits that were hooking tiny sunnies. He caught about 10 of them while I got nothing.

Since there really wasn’t any activity at the dock I wanted to try off a bridge to the East. The algae flats there were even worse there than at the dock. However, there was a boat launch nearby for walk-in watercraft (no road to the launch, just a path) that had some open water. We saw lots of little sunnies swimming around. Matt was tossing in a little hook with a worm and hooking a few of them. He let me use his rod while he went to check out the bridge. I caught a couple of little sunnies just for fun.

A former colleague of mine familiar with the lake told me earlier in the day that there were some big fish on the West side of the lake. From the dock, we could see a clearing, so Matt and I headed that direction to see if we could find it. Unfortunately, we discovered that it was a private residence. The park ended before the clearing.

We did, however, find a path down into the woods that eventually led to the water. It didn’t look very promising to me, but Matt persevered. He found a spot others had fished from. He started tossing a yellow grub and was getting a few hits. He said half of it disappeared just short of the hook. Of course, I then had to try.

I left my tackle box where I was and climbed over a couple of fallen trees to get to the clearing. I brought the scum frog, pearl white and bubble gum fluke with me. For the first half hour, I wasn’t getting any bites, but then one of my casts with the scum frog induced a surface swirl. Another couple of twitches and the frog disappeared. I was so excited to finally get a hit that I had a brain spasm, didn’t wait for the weight like you need to do with scum frogs, and yanked it right out of its mouth promptly hooking a tree behind me. Not more than 10 seconds later, Matt hooked a 12″ largemouth bass from the same spot.

We tried for another half hour or so and I didn’t get any more strikes, but Matt was getting hits on a jighead and grub bouncing off the bottom. He was still pulling in a lot of algae with a lot of casts, but was also getting hits regularly. He gave me one of his lures to try. I felt a tick on one of my casts, but couldn’t hook anything either.

Unfortunately, I had pulled my texas rigged worm out of my tackle box earlier in the week and forgot to put it back before this outing. It would have been fun to try it here.

We were having so much fun I left the lake a half hour later than I wanted to. Matt wondered out loud why work can’t pass so quickly. I agreed.

I’m not sure I’ll be back to Blackhawk unless it’s early Spring or late Fall. It’s really hard to fish here from the shore with all the weeds and algae. We could see the weed edge, but it was just beyond casting range. I’m sure if you hit the weed edge, you would get a strike. It’s a nice little lake that would be great to fish if you had a kayak or float tube since no one could get in with a truck and trailer.

6 Responses to “Blackhawk Skunk”

  1. Tami says:

    I can definitely relate…I just came from a tourney at the California Delta…it had a ton of the that think mat! Even though, it sounds like you guys had a lot of fun!

    • MNAngler says:

      Did you try to fish the mat at all, Tami? I tried using the mat like lily pads and hopped a scum frog through it, but didn’t get any takers.

  2. Hey, At least you had a bite. I’ve had fishing trips where I don’t even get a nibble. And on top of that, I reel in “tons” of weeds and cabbage. I definitely appreciate having or using a boat because you can go to where there is no weeds/algae. Anyway, just wanted to stop by to say hi.

  3. MNAngler says:

    This post was picked up by the Chicago Sun Times: http://bit.ly/9dN0OP

  4. […] 101 – Where to Find FishRigging The Magic LureFaux Review: Hobie eVolve Electric DriveBlackhawk SkunkFishing the Twin CitiesFirst Walleye of 2010Need Advice on Baitcast Reels CURRENT MOONvar […]

Leave a Reply


CURRENT MOON