I recently had the chance to spend a long weekend fishing in the Longville area. With hot temps and calm weather, everything was good for water skiing and recreational boating. Not so good for fishing. The trip started on Upper Trelipe. We pulled into the launch area to see a welcome sight – no rigs parked there! It’s always good to see that, as it means boat traffic is limited to the locals. Trelipe is about 500 acres, and it didn’t take long to find a bassy looking area. We pounded on shoreline flats with cabbage, then the bulrush beds and slop. And came away with an urgent sense that fishing would really suck this day. It wasn’t until we located balls of baitfish over deep water adjacent to a nice shoreline drop that we came into contact with some bass on a fairly regular basis. And soon after that, fish started breaking the surface on a nearby flat, as if clueing us into what they wanted. A cast with a skitter prop, and a nice 15 incher blasted it. Several casts later, an even nicer 17inc smallie nailed a jitterbug. And so it went until the sun started heading over the horizon.
The next day, Leech Lake was on the menu. I haven’t fished here in nearly 12 years, and was looking forward to checking some of my old stomping grounds. We arrived at the Battle point launch only to see dark skies, a strong wind and threatening weather – rekindling memories of some the worst experiences I’ve ever encountered while fishing this lake. Undeterred, we launched and pressed on. Fishing Boy Bay’s rice and bulrush, we could only muster 1 stinking pike. After an hour or so, the weather cleared, winds died and the sun came out and baked everything – even 12 years ago this would be a rare occurrence. Headquarters bay was our next target. Searching for clumps of cattail laden bogs, my mind wandered back to the ‘old days’ when a person could get lost driving around this bay. Not so anymore. It is wide open – what happened to all the weeds? Searching for shallow swaths of cabbage proved fruitless. There was only sand and scrub weeds as far as the eye could see. Looking down into the water, maybe the answer lies there – among all of the scurrying little crayfish. Now, I would think Headquarters would make for a great sandy pool to swim in – if I wasn’t so afraid that the crayfish would eat my feet off. Those things were everywhere! Oh, and for the few remaining clumps of bog – some bass were there. Crayfish shaped plastics (what else?) such as a crawtube garnered some nice bass.
What Leech lacked, Girl and Woman lakes made up for. Nice structure to fish, and lots of cover. What Girl and Woman lakes lacked, but Leech made up for – was size. The bass were a little more eager on the chain, but ran smaller. Limited on time, we fished primarily in Girl lake, where the boat traffic was as bad as any metro area lake. Any nice cabbage flat and even the pads would produce some fish. More bass were caught on plastics than topwater baits. Again, creature style baits were more effective, but some fish were taken on swim baits. On Woman lake, the same thing – fish weed edges and other typical bass cover and you’re bound to encounter some bass. Nothing large, but action nonetheless. During my next trip to Longville, I’ll have to spend more time here.
