Posted by MNAngler On September - 24 - 2009

Date: 9/24/2009
Time: 5:30pm-7:30pm
Body of water: Marion Lake
Location: Lakeville, MN
Weather Conditions: mostly cloudy

I hadn’t been fishing since the neighborhood outing MORE THAN A MONTH AGO. It was driving me crazy. Yes, I went fishing in North Carolina, but it just wasn’t the same. Too unfamiliar. I finally got to go fishing tonight.

My buddy Matt sold his boat a few weeks ago, but he’s one of the best fishermen I know that can find fish while fishing on shore. We had scheduled to go out tonight with our usual partner, John, but during the week his girlfriend got tickets to a wine tasting gala. A wine tasting gala? Really, Matt?

So John and I decided we would go out without him. Then this morning, Matt informs me that his plans fall through (he was so sad–not really) and John says he’s too tired to go out. So now I’m on my way out with Matt tonight.

Since Matt wasn’t going to come out with us, I asked around about places in the South Metro to fish on shore. One of the guys that commented on my blog suggested Marion Lake. Matt was planning to go to a lake near his place, but we settled on trying a new body of water. Turned out it wasn’t such a good move.

We fished for about two hours, off the dock on the Southwestern shore and also fished off the “beach” South of the dock. We used flukes (white pearl and baby bass), beetle spinners (yellow and orange), plastic worm (pumpkinseed), and spinnerbaits (bright orange, white, green, and brown/orange).

About 3/4 of the way between the dock and a point to the South there was a lot of activity on the surface by bait fish only 30 or so feet from shore. I cast and retrieved several of the lures above through the activity, but nothing bit. I did, however, have some interesting tugs on the plastic worm which was rigged weighted Texas style, but later casts showed them to just be weeds.

I also had a couple of hits on my yellow beetle spinner off the dock, but nothing that would hang on. They felt pretty small anyway.

The only thing we came away with were two small (6″ or less) largemouth bass that Matt caught using a beetle spinner sans the spinner (just the jig head and plastic, which was orange with a black stripe). But at least we tried a new lake. And I finally got to do some casting. I swear my arm has been twitching intermittently since early September.

Next week we’re going to try Matt’s lake near his house. He says he catches 30 fish an outing while fishing on shore there. The only trouble is, they are generally 6″ or less. I’d rather catch 1 or 2 greater than 12″ than 30 less than 6″, but if you’re catching fish, even small ones, there may be bigger ones hanging around in the school.

We’ll see.