Memorial Day weekend means several things for Minnesota bass anglers. It’s the unofficial start to summer, it’s nearly always our opening weekend for our bass season and for me it means weightless plastics. It is still spring fishing here in Minnesota and bass on these lakes were in all 3 stages of pre-spawn through post-spawn. Water temps hovered around the low 60’s most of the weekend. The fish quickly tuned me into a lesson that I had learned many times before, weightless soft plastics are a deadly threat during this time of year to catch fish in all 3 stages.
I targeted shallow vegetation, emerging pad stems, docks, pencil reeds and old pad root system with weightless Lake Fork Ring Frys to entice more then 40 largemouth bass including a several 4lb class fish, that could not resist the slow enticing fall of the Ring Fry weighted by just a 4/0 OWG hook. I tried texas rigs, jigs and many other reaction baits, nothing touched the size or numbers of the weightless plastics over the Memorial Day weekend.
Ring Frys are a great choice in shallower water, they fall a little slower then senko style bait which let the fish get a better look at it in shallow water. I have also had great luck fishing lizards, craw tubes, flipping tubes and many other soft plastic baits weightless in the spring. Something about that slow horizontal fall drives the bass crazy.
Try rigging your favorite soft plastic baits on a weightless texas rig on your next trip and leave a comment to tell me how you did!
Rich
RichLindgren.com
