Full Moon Fishing

A buddy and I went out on Tonka this Saturday night for some night trolling. Neither of us have really fished it before, so expectations were limited. It was an amazing night with one of the brightest moons I’ve ever seen. We started shallow and moved shallower without any success mainly due to the crazy amount of weeds seemingly everywhere. We eventually hooked up to a fat 23″ on a deep weed line but that proved to be an anomaly and not a trend. I was amazed at the # of boats out! I expected a good # of musky guys, and we saw at least 20-30, but there were a lot of pleasure boaters out still when we launched at 7pm and came in at 1 am. Guessing that will change by the next full moon so I may give it another go… any IDO’ers out there this weekend?

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I was out there on tonka from 3pm-7pm. And was amazed at the amount of musky guys out. Almost all were fishing muskys.

However, I was not fishing walleyes or muskies.

I was out on a big cruiser getting married

Seeing all the fisherman made me happy though

Congrats! No trolling off the back eh?

BigWerm wrote:

Congrats! No trolling off the back eh?

I would be lying if I didn’t think about it….I did check Navoinics and were cursing at just under 4mph….a perfect musky cranking speed.

Also, outside of getting married and my beautiful bride…one of the highlights was mid ceremony a musky fisherman we cruised by casted a high loppy cast of a cowgirl within a couple feet of the back of the boat.

I smiled, my bride shook her head, and the people that saw it laughed. I looked over at the musky fisherman and he had a big smile on his face….I really hope that was someone on this forum and they read this ha.

Congrats Evan!

I was planning on heading out to fish for eyes but I decided to take the kids on their first squirrel hunt instead. We didn’t bag anything but it got the kids interested in the outdoors and I was a proud papa. By the time we got home papa was too tired to launch the boat haha. still a lot of weeds out there eh? guess im not surprised. We need the temps to drop down a bit yet.

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That looks like a better investment there Crappie! Yeah all the spots we checked out, it was pretty much impossible to troll less than 12 fow due to weeds, and couldn’t find much for a shallow weedline. Not sure if we just looked in the wrong places or if that’s the case for the whole lake.

Oh and water temp was still around 57 degrees.

I made my first trip out on Minnetonka on Saturday from 10-2, I had planned to fish until after dark but my buddy needed to be home by 3.

We tried a little of everything, ended up catching 2 bass and a pike by casting #7 shad raps over weeds. Not really my idea of a good time but we couldn’t get anything on lindy rigs or trolling deep weeds.

Evan Pheneger wrote:

BigWerm wrote:

Congrats! No trolling off the back eh?

I would be lying if I didn’t think about it….I did check Navoinics and were cursing at just under 4mph….a perfect musky cranking speed.

Also, outside of getting married and my beautiful bride…one of the highlights was mid ceremony a musky fisherman we cruised by casted a high loppy cast of a cowgirl within a couple feet of the back of the boat.

I smiled, my bride shook her head, and the people that saw it laughed. I looked over at the musky fisherman and he had a big smile on his face….I really hope that was someone on this forum and they read this ha.

I was out there throwing baits, but it wasn’t me. I only saw a handful of musky fisherman….. I was surprised at how few musky fisherman were out. Maybe i’m not fishing the right part of the lake haha

Pat McSharry wrote:

I only saw a handful of musky fisherman….. I was surprised at how few musky fisherman were out.

We spent a good amount of time checking things out on the electronics, and ended up traveling a large amount of the lake so we probably saw a good percentage of the musky guys. See any fish Pat?

BigWerm wrote:

We spent a good amount of time checking things out on the electronics, and ended up traveling a large amount of the lake so we probably saw a good percentage of the musky guys. See any fish Pat?

We did not see a fish. I’m just starting to learn the lake though. My home waters up north haven’t been all too great so the last few weeks i’ve been fishing more around here. It’s a lot deeper weeds than what i’m used to fishing. So many weeds that it’s hard to narrow down much, just have to keep casting and hope to start seeing a pattern i guess!

Pat McSharry wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>BigWerm wrote:</div>
We spent a good amount of time checking things out on the electronics, and ended up traveling a large amount of the lake so we probably saw a good percentage of the musky guys. See any fish Pat?

We did not see a fish. I’m just starting to learn the lake though. My home waters up north haven’t been all too great so the last few weeks i’ve been fishing more around here. It’s a lot deeper weeds than what i’m used to fishing. So many weeds that it’s hard to narrow down much, just have to keep casting and hope to start seeing a pattern i guess!

I heard the sucker bite has been going out there. I had a couple buddies out a few days ago one dragging one casting and they dumped 2 really nice fish on suckers and nothing all day casting.

I got out on the lake you got your big girl on this spring Kory. Didn’t get the 30 incher but the bite was pretty decent with a 24 being the biggest. The moon was phenomenal!
Heading back up this Thursday. I’d like to get up there every weekend until ice up.