Weekend Tournament Recap: Challenging Conditions at Lake Waconia's 2024 Minnyak Elite Series Kickoff

June 12, 2024

By Erik Koffski

EVENT WEEKEND UPDATE

Saturday marked the start of the 2024 Minnyak Elite Series with stop #1 on beautiful Lake Waconia in Waconia, MN.

I came into this tournament blind. I hadn't been able to prefish this body of water. I had to settle with online research via the new Omnia Pro fishing app.

I launched on the south end of the lake and started with top water buzzbait. Working both the shallows and the submerged grass edges. This did not produce the bite I was hoping for. I started throwing a wacky rig and a Texas rigged Yum dingers at docks and tree lawdowns. Managed to get my first bite on the south side of the island on a wacky.

The rest of the day, I tried to work docks around the west side with a couple of bites.

I spent some time working a large boulder reef with a square bill and managed my first decent fish.

The rest of my day was working the shallows and pencil reed lines. I kept culling out the little 13" dinks that I had on the board. With an hour left to fish I wanted to fish the north side of the island, so I headed back in that direction trolling a square bill over the top of the big grass flat and only caught pike. When I made it to the island, I had exhausted my trolling battery and had about 15 min left to fish. Caught my biggest fish of the day on the fist cast at a downed log. 15.75" and then another dink out from under this same log.