Well now that the first frost and snow have to come to Minnesota and my time is now spent behind the bench at the ice rink, my 2013 fishing season has come to an end. As I look forward to an exciting and yet another busy fishing season in 2014, here is a quick look back at five lures that managed to end up on the deck of my boat the majority of the time.
RC Tackle Swim Jig: From the vast heavily vegetated backwaters of the Mississippi River to the lakes of Minnesota, the ¼ oz. RC Tackle Swim Jig proved yet again that it is a staple in my arsenal continually every year. I relied on the standard black/blue pattern many times, to the various bluegill patterns during the summer months and in the fall white shad patterns got the call.
Texas-Rigged Soft Plastics: Whether I was flipping a cut bank on the Mississippi River, or flipping milfoil on lakes around the Twin Cities Metro area, or punching through matted wild rice on the vast Leech Lake, a Texas-rigged Zoom soft plastic got the job done many times for me this year. My typical Texas-rig set up included a ½ or ¾ oz. Eagle Claw Lazer Sharp Tungsten weight and a 4/0 TroKar TK130 Flippin hook. When flipping cut banks or laydowns I rigged up a Zoom Z-Hog and then when I needed to have a more streamlined bait that had a lot of action, in the more dense cover I used a Speed Craw.
XCalibur Zell Pop: Fishing a topwater plug is one of my favorite ways to target both largemouth and smallmouth on the Mississippi River during the months of July, August and September. Not only did this bait in the larger 2 5/16” inch size catch me a lot of bass when I found them actively feeding on main river structure, it also caught some dandy tournament quality bass as seen in this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGjbYePS56U . Read on….
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