The Hennepin Canal features a lot of water, making it tough to decide where to invest my time when able to make some casts. My obsession with stats plays a significant role in such decisions and in 2025 I leaned heavily on hitting some numerical milestones. I managed to boost my Top 5 weight on two areas into double figures and landed Bass #100 on another stretch but overall, The Canal bass played hard to get both in terms of quality and quantity.

June 7, 2025 – Hennepin Canal 2025 Top Bass at 3-4 (19″) on a Senko wacky rig (Bass #100 on this stretch)

Hennepin Canal – Henry County, Bureau County, IL
(20 visits, 14 pools – 3/14 through 10/27)
66 bass
54.25 hours (0.50 to 4.25-hour trips)
1.22 bass/hour
Top Bass: 3-4 Senko on June 7
Top 5 Weight: 13-7 (3-4,2-12,2-11,2-6,2-6)

 

Overview
I have divided The Canal into twenty-six sections as it runs from the Rock River at Colona to the Feeder Junction just northwest of Sheffield. Currently, I have achieved a ten-pound Top 5 in sixteen of those sections. All told, I visited six spots that lacked a double-digit Top 5 in 2025 but could only get the bites that I was seeking on two of the pools. When visiting areas that already had an established ten-pound Top 5, I did manage to find a few quality bites to give three of the spots a boost.

Lures
The Canal is a shallow waterway with abundant aquatic vegetation. These features make for ample opportunity to employ a topwater approach once the water warms. Forty-eight of my bass were landed between May 3 and July 19 and twenty-nine of those fish came on either frogs or buzzbaits. Rather than getting too deep into the variables that influenced my lure choices, here is a breakdown of the numbers.
Frogs – 18 bass
Buzzbaits – 13 bass
Spinnerbaits – 13 bass
Chatterbaits – 11 bass
Lipless Crankbaits – 5 bass
Plastic Worms – 5 bass
Swim Jig – 1 bass

Videos
For The Hennepin Canal videos, I chose a pair of bass that pushed me over the ten-pound Top 5 mark on two different pools. For the first clip below, my starting weight sat at 9-3 and this bass tipped the scales at 2-6 to give me the boost that I was seeking. One item to note in this clip is the delayed hookset. When fishing a topwater lure, you don’t want to set the hook based on the visual and auditory aspects of the strike. Instead, you want to make sure that you feel the fish to ensure that it has a good bite on lure. Otherwise, you run the risk of yanking the lure away prematurely. It takes some steady nerves and some practice to delay the hookset as the natural reaction to an exciting topwater strike is to immediately set the hook. In this case, there is quite a lengthy pause (perhaps too long) but all that matters is that the bass made it to the boat.

 

For the next clip, I was on a stretch with a Top 5 Weight of 9-6 to start my day. I had missed a good fish on a frog early that may have done the trick before landing a 2-0, also on a frog, that pushed me up to 9-9. This meant that I needed a 2-3 to reach the ten-pond mark. The frog came through again with a 2-12 to achieve my goal and along with being the Top Bass on the pool.

 

2026 Outlook
June 5, 2026, will mark the five-year anniversary of my first bass on The Canal. Since that day, I have landed 912 bass so one goal for 2026 is log Canal Bass #1000. In addition, I have ten stretches that still fall shy of a ten-pound Top 5. Two of these areas, I have never fished and the remaining spots have established weights ranging from 1-3 to 8-14. I have my work cut out for me to achieve my goals and the dilemma of too many fishing holes and not enough free time.

The 2025 time and results (66 bass in 54.25 hours) were a far cry from the totals of the previous year (270 bass in 136.00 hours) as the focus was shifted away from The Canal in favor of other bodies of water. Even so, I feel that the bass outsmarted me on that old waterway. Perhaps I will get my “revenge” in 2026. In the meantime, we move on to the results from Lake Storey for the next post in the Locations series. Talk to you later. Troy