Lindy is a part-time bass tournament angler, and his plan for the day was to pre-fish Leech Lake in preparation for an upcoming Excel Bass singles tournament. He has had great success as an occasional fish-for-pay angler; his bass tournament accomplishments include runner-up the past two seasons as Excel Bass Angler of the Year.
Leech Lake is best known as a walleye and muskie destination, but the big lake also is home to largemouth bass, fat and feisty. But overnight, a cold front had roared southward out of Canada, presenting Lindy and me with an anglers' nightmare.
"A classic cold front," Lindy said as he hopped behind the steering wheel of his Skeeter bass boat, rain gear and life jacket in place.
Lindy steered the bow into the wind as giant swells, perhaps 4 feet high, greeted us. The distant shoreline -- some 15 miles away -- was barely visible. Not a boat was in sight.
Lindy works full-time delivering dairy products, and it was his day off. Despite the inclement weather, he had come Leech Lake to fish, and fish we would. He aimed his boat toward a sheltered part of the lake (more out of necessity than choice) and away we went, water flying.
Our first stop was a shallow water point flanked on two sides by deeper water. On top of the point grew a thin stand of bulrush, along with a bit of wild rice. The spot looked fishy.
Although the upcoming tournament was more than a week away, Lindy hoped to locate some bass and find a fish-catching pattern that would hold up until tournament time.
Lindy outfitted his favorite rod and reel -- one of many in his boat -- with a Texas-rigged tube jig in the shape of a crawfish; I tied on a spinner bait, a longtime bass anglers' favorite that in recent years seems to have lost some bass-catching ability.
"I'll be the guinea pig," I said to Lindy, "and try a variety of lures."
Soon, Lindy boated the first bass of the day, a fish that weighed roughly 3 pounds. Both of us noticed how chunky the bass appeared. The fish was quickly released. A short time later, from the opposite side of the bulrushes, Lindy set the hook and eventually hauled aboard another bass, a nice 4-pounder.
We moved to another bulrush patch, and Lindy caught a couple of bass there, too. A pattern was beginning to emerge. The fish seemed to be holding in shallow water, just inside the patches of bulrush and scattered rice. Deeper water was nearby.
As the day wore on, the wind continued to blow and the temperature hovered a few degrees either side of 60, conditions that prevented us from exploring some of the spots we had wanted to try. We had, however, found a number of bulrush patches that held fish on a day when most anglers stayed home.
Tournament day
The shallow bulrush pattern Lindy and I established held up for tournament day. But, as we had suspected during our day of pre-fishing, other anglers had found the same fishing locations.
"At each of my spots, there were other tournament anglers fishing," Lindy said. "I caught a lot of fish, but the bigger fish that you and I caught were split between me and the other anglers. Looking back, I maybe should have downsized my lures a bit and tried to fool some neutral bass into biting."
A total of 45 anglers competed that day on Leech Lake. Lindy's five bass (a limit for that tournament) weighed 14.2 pounds, which put him in 24th place. The winning five-bass limit weighed 19.4 pounds.
"I was disappointed, of course," Lindy said, "especially after I finished second on the Whitefish Lake tournament earlier in June. But that's tournament angling."