I headed out to The Canal on October 20 in search of nine bass to meet my goal of 447 bass for 2023. The mark would give me 1,000 bass over the last two years after a new personal record of 553 bass in 2022. After a tough bite to start the day, the bass came through as detailed below.

Chose this pump at a gas station along the way for good luck 

Stats
Date: October 20
Location: Hennepin Canal (three pools)
Time: 10:40am-5:35pm (5.50 hours fishing)
Totals: 10 bass
Weather: Sunny/breezy, 54-60F
Lures: War Eagle Spinnerbait (chartreuse/white) with Bass Pro Shops Twin Tail trailer (Houdini) – 6 bass, Z-Man Chatterbait (sexy shad) with BPS Speed Shad trailer (pro blue) – 3 bass, Mann’s Baby 1- Crankbait (red craw) – 1 bass
Top Bass: 3-10 Chatterbait
Top 5 Weight (three pools combined): 8-6 (3-10,1-12,1-1,1-1,0-14)

Winning Lures

Notes and Nonsense

Slow Start – Arriving at my first destination, I was greeted by another angler who had just launched. We had a brief conversation to compare some notes and I elected to head for an alternate location to stay out of his way. The second location was new water, and the bass were not as welcoming as I had hoped. It took me forty-five minutes to get my first and only bite. I hung around for a total of two hours and gave it a good effort before heading for an area I had only seen from the bank on a family outing this summer.

1:41pm – New Top Bass record for me on The Canal at 3-10

New Top Bass – Fully aware that there are no guarantees in fishing, I opted to gamble on another stretch of unfamiliar water rather than any regular stomping grounds as I searched for eight more bass. I had previously seen about fifty yards of this area from the bank and that was while playing fishing guide for Julie and the kids in June. Two more hours of rowing and casting was much more successful with six bass, but I was still two bass shy of my goal. The highlight of the stretch, however, was a 3-10 bass that set a new Top Bass mark for me on The Canal, topping a pair at 3-6.

4:34pm – Bass #1000 as described below

Bass #1000 – Stop number three was a spot that I had fished twice before with the last visit being a week prior. That trip had produced a solid bite with fifteen bass landed. And with recent decent weather, I was hoping for a repeat performance. An hour and a half only produced three bass but that was one more than I needed. At 4:34pm, a chatterbait fooled a 12” bass that weighed in at 0-13 for Bass #1000. No matter that it was not a trophy in terms of size, it made the mark.

4:44pm – A new trick with a bass caught on an unusual piece of structure, a dead deer

Deer Bass – Having Bass #1000 in the log made my day but I still had some daylight left and some distance remaining to row back to the truck. The next hour only produced one more bass, but Bass #1001 turned out to be a memorable catch as well. I had fished the spot where it was landed a week earlier and thought that it set up perfectly. The shoreline featured a stretch of chunky riprap at and below the water level. This rocky run served as one edge of an open water trough that was lined with lilypads on the channel side. I had worked it over on the previous visit without a bite but figured that it was worth another look. As I approached, I observed what I thought was a log at the leading edge of the channel side of the trough. As I got closer, I realized that the log was actually a dead deer. It turns out that the added “cover” was just what the spot needed to produce a bite as a chatterbait duped a 12.5” (0-14) bass. It made for a good fish story (and video for a future post), and that’s what it’s all about.

 

It’s all icing on the cake from this trip forward as my days on the water are numbered with October drawing to a close. My annual aim is to finish the year with a November bass and the new month only lies a few days away. But I am getting ahead of myself as there are still a couple more October outings to report. Talk to you later. Troy