In the southern U.S., the dog days of summer will be starting soon, but in northern Minnesota where I grew up, the really hot weather doesn’t start until August. That’s one of the things I like about the North Country — we don’t experience as much of that extremely hot weather.
The other thing I like about this region is every lake we fish is natural. There are no reservoirs around us. All the lakes were made by glaciers thousands of years ago, so it’s definitely a super-cool area. Now that I’ve seen plenty of reservoirs, it makes me appreciate all of the North Country’s natural fisheries.
Our lakes are full of good-sized largemouth and smallmouth. We don’t have the 8- to 10-pounders you’ll find in other areas, but we have lots of the 4- to 6-pounders in both species.
It’s hard for me to say which one is my favorite because it changes. Right now, I’m on a big largemouth kick. You could ask me a week later, and it might be all smallmouth.
I go in moods. I’ll catch a bunch of one until I’m sick of it and then go do the other one. The cool thing about my area is you can do that on the same lake. You can mix it up throughout the day
Some of my favorite lakes in the North Country are Leech, Mille Lacs and Vermillion. From there, I like to lake hop on little 300- to 500-acre lakes.
I kind of gravitate to the bigger lakes just because I think they change more with the conditions. They have more to offer, and I feel like that applies more to the lakes that we may visit on tour.
On a big lake, I feel like I have to adapt to the conditions more like I would in a tournament scenario. Every day you have to break down the lake, so these North Country lakes are definitely great training grounds.
Our bass spawn in shallow bays, then they work out to the weed lines and rockpiles where they’ll spend their summer months. Right now, we’re catching them as they move out to the deeper areas.
For largemouth, my absolute favorite way to catch them is flipping a 3/4-ounce Strike King Hack Attack jig in the thickest cover I can find on a flat. Usually, they’ll stop in the thick pockets of grass on the way out to the deeper weed lines.
For smallmouth, I really like to cover water with a swimbait like a Strike King Rage Swimmer. Especially when you get a breeze, the smallmouth will bite a swimbait good on sand flats.
Whatever I’m targeting, I try to approach each day as if it’s my first time on the lake. Even though I fish these lakes a lot, I do my best to treat each trip as if I’m fishing a new lake.
Traveling as much as I do for tournament fishing, I will start going to the same lakes over and over. But every time you go back to a lake it can be completely different.
So, at home, I try to break down each lake as if I’ve never seen it before and, with time, it just makes the lightbulb go off that much faster. This mental process helps prepare me for any time the tournament schedule takes me to a new body of water.
