New Fisherman / woman

[VSP]

Hello all! I am a newbie to fishing in the metro area. I love fishing up in the BWCA. The small mouth action rocks. However in the metro area I am perplexed were to start. My fiancee wants to catch her first non sun fish so badly and I havent been able to help. Does anyone have any suggestion were to try. I am not lookin to take them aboard...just catch and release. I know she would be thrilled to land something other than a finger bitting sunfish.

Any suggestions would be awesome.

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[vister]

Welcome to the forum, I'm sure you'll learn a lot of info from here, I know I have, and maybe share a thing or two as well. Unfortunately, You won't be able to get smallies around here, unless you go to the river. That may be your best bet as well, pool #2 of the mississippi has a great population of big, healthy eyes, catch and release only too. My favorite bassin lake is lotus in chanhassen, although they can be tough to find. Lots of northerns as well. I haven't been out for a few weeks so I don't know how the fishing is down here. I usually head back home. I'd be willing to bet that a buzzbait would get a bass chasing it out of the water about anywhere ya go, so just work the edges of reeds adjacent to deeper, cooler water. Good luck fishing!

[tunrevir]

Whitebear has smallies and largemouths but that is the only lake in the metro I know of with both. The Croix, Miss or Minnesota rivers all hold a few smallies near the cities. Welcome to the forum and good luck out there!

Tunrevir~

[SkitterPopper]

There are smallmoth in Minnetonka too. But I would not recommend going out there this weekend and think it will be a BWCA experience. More like a "Boaters gone wild" experience.

[vister]

guess there are more smallie waters out there than i thought

[lotsofish]

The largemouths have really been going the past couple times I've been out. There are a lot of lakes around with decent bass populations. You might want to try one of the c&r only lakes like Turtle or Jane.

Here's what I would start with as an easy method to fish and something that works a lot of the time.

Pick up some smaller plastic worms, something like a 5" powerbait worm or something like that. You might want to have a light colored one and a dark colored one to try them both, depending on the conditions. Hook size should be about 1/0 or 2/0. Get the worm hooks with the offset shank, in case you want to hook it up texas style or weedless at some point. To start with, hook the worm "wacky". That means, hook the worm once, right through the middle and without any weight on the line.

When you're out on the lake, look for some weedy areas. Try to find weeds that are around 3-6 feet of water. If there are emergent weeds that go out that far and then submerged weeds out deeper, then cast right up to the edges of the emergent weeds. If there aren't emergent weeds, cast right on top of the submerged weeds. If you can find where the weedline is, that would be another good place to try. Mornings and evenings are going to be your best bets for this type of spot, but you might be able to find fish there all day, depending on the lake or weather.

When you cast it out, your basically just going to let it sink. It will sink slowly, so you really have to take your time with it. After you give it some time to sink, just twitch your rod up a bit, reel in the slack and let it sink back down. Keep doing that until you get back to the boat. You'll want to keep the line fairly tight. Watching the line is key for determining when you have a fish on. If you see the line moving the opposite way, set the hook. If the line feels heavy at all, set the hook. A lot of the time the fish will take it as it's sinking.

If there are bass around, you can usually get a few with this method. You could try a larger bait if you wanted, but the 5" worm will probably get you more action which I think is what you're looking for, at least to get started.

Good luck!

[DonBo]

For smallies, you can't beat the St. Croix. From the upper reaches all the way to the Miss. and beyond. You can catch them deep and shallow with artificials or live bait. It's as close to a sure thing you can find this side of the B.W.C.A.