With a Friday off work for the Fourth of July holiday, I decided that I would go ahead and get up at 4:30am like normal but on this day I was going fishing. My destination was the Hennepin Canal, and my goal was to land thirteen bass. That thirteenth catch would achieve the milestone of 1,000 bass caught on the historic waterway. Well, I got the right number of bites, but a couple of the bass got loose before I could reel them in. Read on for the rest of the story.

6:35am – Top Bass (Canal Bass #989) weighing 2-6 (17″) on a topwater frog

Stats
Date: July 3
Location: Hennepin Canal
Time: 5:45am-10:15am
Totals: 11 bass, 1 pumpkinseed
Weather: Partly cloudy/calm
Water temperature: Not available
Lures: 5” Yamamoto Senko wacky rig (smoke shad) – 5 bass, Spro Flappin Frog 65 (nasty shad) – 4 bass, Z-Man Chatterbait (sexy shad) with BPS Speed Shad trailer (sight shad) – 1 bass, 1 pumpkinseed,  Strike King Rage Swimmer 3.75” (pro blue/red pearl) with 3/16 oz Owner Flashy Swimmer jighead – 1 bass
Top Bass: 2-6 Frog
Top 5 Weight: 9-7 (2-6,1-15,1-12,1-12,1-10)

Winning lures

Notes and Nonsense

Variety – After two hours of casting, I had four bass in the log. A fair start but not on pace to meet my thirteen bass goal with my available time slot of four to five hours on the water. Those first four bass all came on different presentations as I could not find any one lure that had them dialed in. The order of the catches was as follows:
Swimbait – 6:00am (15” and 1-12 weight)
Topwater Frog – 6:35am (17” and 2-6 weight)
Chatterbait – 7:09am (14.5” and 1-8 weight)
Senko wacky rig – 7:46am (11” no weight recorded)

Also landed a bonus species with a pumpkinseed

Senko Flurry – Between 7:46am and 8:47am, I focused on a historically reliable spot at the turnaround location of my hike and landed five bass on a Senko wacky rig. The uptick in bites got me closer to a pace to reach my goal before quitting time. However, the spot was only a couple hundred feet in length and each of the five catches were short fish (6.5” to 11.5”). While they all counted towards my goal, I selfishly wanted some bigger bites and opted to try my luck with a topwater frog on the hike back to my vehicle.

9:47am – Top Bass Runner-Up (Canal Bass #998) weighing 1-15 (15.5″) on a topwater frog

Duckweed and Dragonflies – It was nearly forty minutes after landing Bass #995 on a Senko wacky rig that I got my next fish. That catch, Bass #996, came at 9:26am on a topwater frog near an offshore patch of surface vegetation. That left me with roughly forty-five minutes remaining and needing four more bass. Most of the vegetation lining the shoreline looks the same although I am sure there are subtle differences beneath the weed mats. Therefore, as I wander, I am always looking and listening for clues. Shortly before wrapping up the day, I stopped at an expanse of duckweed after hearing and seeing a couple fish bust the surface chasing dragonflies and damselflies. In the span of eight minutes, I landed two bass and had a third briefly hooked to bring my total to 998 bass. Unfortunately, I could not duplicate the results in another similar spot and ended my day two bass shy of my goal.

 

Eleven bass and a Top 5 weight just short of double-digits was a solid four-and-a-half-hour hike. The late pair of frog catches got my hopes up but it wasn’t meant to be. Along with the late miss on the frog, I had also lost a fish earlier in the day on a chatterbait, meaning that I had exactly the thirteen bites that I needed. Granted, I could have pushed it a bit longer, but the rising heat and humidity had me beat. Once upon a time, maybe. These days, I am okay with admitting that the stamina ain’t what it used to be and those bass will still be there awaiting my return. That return was the following morning so stay tuned. Talk to you later. Troy