Pre-Summer Bass Tactics

Post spawn largemouth can be tricky! Especially on a high-pressure lake like Minnetonka, however with dedication and time, you can boat some big fish from that big ol body of water. With a calm breeze and some over cast skies the fish were in the mood to eat.

Coming around one point, there were tons of very small bait fish busting around the boat and by the weed edge as soon as we noticed this the fish began to bite. Lots of short fish but the occasional two or three pounder would hit, keeping us busy with pike bass and even a walleye.

We were changing lures and retrieve speeds almost constantly to find out what the fish were keying in on. One pass in specific, they wanted a swim bait and on the other, they wanted a spinner and even a couple times a rattle trap.

One thing I noticed was the color factor, the bigger fish opted for an orange and bright yellow combo. While the little fish would eat just about anything in any color. I started to throw a 5” white swim bait with a 3/8oz swim bait head.

Maybe a little heavy on the head size but combine that with braided line and a fast gear ratio and I easily kept it only inches under the surface. I was fishing this in less than 5ft of water the entire time trying to focus on the changes in the weed line and bottom composition.

Because the water was so dingy and dirty, I was okay with the 40lb braid, the fish were also hitting only seconds after the bait would land on the water leading me to believe that obviously this was a reaction bite and I knew I could get away with braid.

Focusing on the inner weed edges we found enough fish to keep us busy for a couple hours. The inner weed edge was in about 2ft of water or less with healthy looking green vegetation. Once we found the vegetation that looked dead or a little brown the fishing would slow drastically.

Summer has officially kicked off, make sure to be versatile in what you do. Fish patterns can change daily even hourly.