Minnesota Fishing Report: 17 September 2014


We decided to fish Five Island Lake that day and I knew my magic bait would be hot...and it was. Once again I was using an Owner 1/0 offset wide gap worm hook, a 1/16 oz bullet sinker, Texas rigged, and my Berkley Powerbait 4" worm Black with a short Chartreuse curly tail.


Fellow fishermen, you will recognize the scene. A log was jutting out from the bank with weed growth offset 4 feet from the log. I made the perfect cast and the worm made no noise as it silently entered the water right beside the log. With the light weight, the worm slowly drifted to the bottom. I twitched it once....waited a few seconds and twitched it again. That's when I saw the line moving towards the under side of the log and I set the hook. The hook-set was great but the fish wasn't moving. Was I hung up on the log? Nope, the fish just wasn't cooperating and was not about to leave it's lair.


After what seemed an eternity but was actually just a few seconds, I'm finally reeling the large-mouth bass out from under the cover. My drag tension was set fairly high yet the fish was causing the reel to sing as it fought against the tension.

I finally managed to bring the fish close to the boat and in the crystal clear water we all got to see what was on the end of the line...a nice 6lb or better large-mouth. While I was keeping tension on the line, Knute (The Heathen) had the net ready and then.......... the line snapped!

I'm assuming my 8lb mono was frayed from debris under the log and was weakened.

That was the second huge bass I lost that trip. The other one was with onemorecast when I had a nice small mouth spit the hook.

Five Island turned out to yield 15 nice bass for me that day but none compared to the one that got away.