Headed to Mille Lacs this weekend. Never been before. Where is the best place to get bait and a good fishing report each morning? We are targeting Walleye and Smallmouth. So any other help would be greatly appreciated. We haven’t picked our lodging yet either. Night trolling? Is that long lined, planer board, lead core or something different? Please and Thank you.
I’ve liked Hunters Resort the last 2 of 3 times I’ve been there.
I’ve liked Hunters Resort the last 2 of 3 times I’ve been there.
What happened the other time?
If coming from the south, I’d stop at princes bait on 169. Otherwise Johnson’s Portside on the SE corner or Garrison Sports on he NW side. Hunters Point or Appledoorns has good food and lodging or Red Door for lodging (I’ve never eaten there, but believe they recently expanded their cafe). I usually long line troll at night. Unless it’s a decently calm day, trailer to and launch on the up wind side of the lake.
I like Tutt’s in Garrison. Nice people and a good selection.
We were up last weekend and stayed at the red door. Good place and reasonable I thought. Tutts bait was good to. Garrison sports is closed I believe?
Where is the best place to get bait and a good fishing report each morning?
I’d put the reports found on this forum right up there. Baitshops are a good starting point and from my experience the ones around ML are going to be more forthcoming when sharing details of a hot bite than bait shops elsewhere due to the vast expanse of the lake, and because it’s catch and release only. If someone slays them in 14′ on rocky reef type structure with rippin’ raps they can share their exact technique and specifics on what to look for on the graph when trying to locate them….
….and have zero concern that the next day they’re going to arrive where they were smoking them the day before to find a dozen boats right over top and get crowded off the spot/pattern/bite they were the first to figure out. That’s often a legitimate concern even when fishing a good sized lake a couple thousand acres in size. Not the case for ML.
I’d call a few places prior to booking a room and ask them if they’ve got a fair amount of reservations for when you’ll be there. If you can confirm there’s at least a handful of guys staying at either the Red Door, Twin Pines, Hunter’s Point, etc., I’d look at the forecast and if there’s a strong wind predicted I’d factor that into choosing a location.
What you’re looking for is a place where it’ll be easy to bump into other fisherman and chat them up. Baitshops, cafe’s, landings, are all good but none of them beat a bar. You’d be surprised by how much I’ve learned by sitting at a bar and making small talk that when it comes disclosing what I was out doing that day, regardless whether or not it was duck hunting, deer hunting, or walleye fishing—I didn’t get poop. Don’t even know why I waste my time going out there.
When it comes to ML I always tell the truth since there’s no reason not to, but everything else (ducks especially) I have no clue what I’m doing and am starting to question if what I’m after even exists in that part of the state.
Most outdoorsman embellish and have a lot of ego, and you need to be careful of that. Those types will help you but the information is often garbage. They’ll gladly tell you how they boated forty that day….the only problem is they fished hard from sunrise to sundown and actually boated a total of four between them and their buddy.
That being said, don’t overthink it. Most guys are going to tell you something that’s somewhat close to reality.
ML is full of fish and the bite is on. If you can get a crankbait within striking distance of bottom fishing in 8′ to 24′ of water while going under 3mph (1.9 to 2.4 mph being ideal), you’re going to catch fish.
If I was fishing this weekend I’d start out targeting where I left off—sand in 22′ of water while searching more for clouds of baitfish than marking walleyes, trolling a purple flicker minnow. If you go shallower and troll over rocks you’ll still pick up some walleyes but get quite a few smallmouth as well….nothing like the reports others have posted either using ripping raps or live bait rigging with creek chubs, but you’ll catch some.
Good luck!
Five or six years ago I logged onto a fishing forum for really the first time ever. A group of my friends and family were going up to Red Lake ice fishing and I’d never been before. Naturally, I was excited and wanted to have an understanding of when/what to expect for the bite, as well as any techniques that were really producing, what the hot lures were I’d be fool to make the drive without them in my tackle box, and maybe pick up a thing of two completely foreign to me. Right away I noticed every single guy referencing something I’d never heard of before….and no exaggeration, literally every single guy was mentioning the same thing and I had no friggin’ clue what they were taking about. I racked my brain theorizing what it was they were doing. I did a search using the term and read through all the threads and posts containing the term hoping for a description. Finally, after about a week and still totally stumped, I just asked if someone would be so kind as to explain how I should set up my “____ _____” and the finer techniques on how to begin using what I assumed had to be a new groundbreaking technique.
Care to guess what the term was that had me so confused?
A:
“Dead Stickin”
Apparently some ice fishing dork…excuse me, “Hard Water Dork,” decided to come up with a new term for bobber fishing. Technically you could have a line down the hole with no bobber and your pole sitting there untouched like it’s ‘dead’ (Oooh soooo clever) and that would also be dead sticking. Guys had their jigging rod (“alive sticking?”) in their hand over one hole, and their second line being an untouched rod in another nearby hole. What made it more confusing was that every last one of them was using “live bait” on their dead stick (total oxymoron) almost exclusively rigged under a slip bobber, using a plain hook, with a split shot or two a foot and a half up to weight it down. Again, some ice fishing dork felt the need to rename what’s called “bobber fishing” and give it a term as if it’s some really new and extreme technique that is cutting edge.
Other examples of such stupid crap include guys like Jason Mitchell talking about fish going “positive” or being “negative” instead of just saying “now they’re biting” or “they’re not biting. They think giving layman speak that’s been easy to understand forever a somewhat scientific sounding new term makes them sound smart.
I started jokingly calling augers “hole punchers” and open water “soft ice” when in the presence of known ice fisherman to mock them. Shockingly, quite a few started to adopt my joke question of, “Hey, what’re you running for a hole puncher bra!?”
The point of this story is to let people know that there is no such thing as a stupid question, especially pertaining to fishing terminology. Trust me, there is nothing out there you can’t do with a fourteen foot boat and ten horse effectively enough to catch fish—it just might be considerably less effective than the manner an experienced guy in a $65K boat is able to do it. Don’t worry about that. The biggest thing to remember about fishing is dry lines don’t catch fish. The number one difference maker in boating fish is being on the water.
I guarantee anyone that if they’re open to describing what their setup is (how many guys, boat, type of rods, electronics, etc.) that someone on here will be willing to give them a recommendation as to what to try as a starting point knowing their limitations that will give them a much better chance of catching fish and make the leaning curve everyone goes through a little less steep.
There are ways around every limitation so don’t be embarrassed by what yours are….the whole goal is to catch fish….not be the guy online that thinks they’re the coolest because they got the most new and expensive gear.
A cheap old black and white depthfinder, the $10 navionics spo on a smartphone, a could rod holders on anything that floats and can get you somewhere relative to a decent trolling speed, and whatever rods and reels you got that you threw enough fresh line onto—-and you can do pretty much everything that the guys in the expensive brand new boats can do in terms of trolling. It’s a hell of a lot less comfortable and you sure don’t want to be the last guy headed in when the weather gets bad, but you can do pretty much everything that they’re doing similar enough to boat a lot of fish too. When they’re biting you can get away with a lot. All the extras that come with a fancy new boat might result in the guys in it catching a half dozen when it’s really slow, and you only get two, one, or maybe even blanked for the day. When they’re biting just getting your line in the water should be enough to result in catching fish.
Night trolling? Is that long lined, planer board, lead core or something different?
Night trolling is simply trolling crankbaits at night. Long lining, planer boards, and leadcore are all trolling tools/techniques and are used to various degrees during the fall. Let’s say there are three boats on a bay after sundown sometime in October. Boat One is trolling crankbaits using leadcore line with 12′ to 30′ of mono leaders to get their crankbaits down to where the walleyes are (close to bottom). Boat Two is ‘long lining’ mono or braid and letting out 200’+ of line, and Boat Three is doing something similar to boat two but clipping a planer board on their line once they’ve got a couple hundred feet out and then let out fifty feet or more to get the planer board out and away from the boat (giving the advantage of covering a wider swath as well as getting to fish that are less prone to being spooked by the boat).
All three boats are night trolling. They’re just using different methods to do it that they believe will result in catching more fish.
Mille Lacs has a renown fall trolling bite for walleyes. The two peaks are the September and October full moons, with the latter widely regarded as the better of the two. As the water temps and amount of daylight decrease walleyes start putting on the feed bag as they go into winter, and this is why the fall trolling bite is known for producing large females that are as fat as you’re going to see them during any period of open water fishing.
I just came back from 2 days of fishing Mille Lacs for Smallies and Walleye.
Went to Tutts in Garrison and picked up nice sized Creek Chubs.
We were catching the Smallies and Wallys from 15 to 20 feet on shoreline rock piles using Lindy Rigs. The Smallies were crushing the chubs.The
Walleye were a little more difficult to tell especially going thru the rocks.
I also tried a Moonshine shiver minnow for a while and caught one Wally and lost one.
Good Luck, Ron.
Catch and release or not baitstores will always tell you what they know, they have to its their business-sometimes they know a lot sometimes they know very little.
We stopped at Tutt’s earlier in the year (june) … I asked if they had any reports. Told be some guys ahd started catching fish on the flats with minnows and leeches.
I had my head set to start on a shoreline break that was good the week before. We started there, and caught some fish … but it was way slower than earlier. Decided to move out to a flat, and proceeded to pound fish the rest of the day! Made me a believer on Tutt’s info!
My experience.
Tutt’s has always been my favorite. Great family that owns/operates it. I love that when they bought it they put up the mural they found in the back.
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