Finding Summer Tullibees

I love C&R pike fishing but the ML monster pike have alluded me. Knowing that they should go deeper and into open water in the summer I suspect they hanging out in cooler water near a food source, schools of tullibees.

I found this article talking about searching for tullibees on smaller bodies of water. The article was helpful and gave me a couple ideas on where to start looking. I plan to do some driving around this weekend, weather permitting, probably on the southern end of the lake, staring at the side imaging.

Does anyone have any pointers, tricks, or tips on how to find the tullibees in summer?
Kyhl

Hey Kyhl,

Tullibees are plentiful almost anywhere you troll in the basin and if you find them you will find the walleyes… They will be primarily on the bottom during the day and rise up more in the mornings and evenings. I have caught several large pike and muskies out there trolling for walleyes on Rapala TD-11 Deep Taildancers; however, I have never actually specifically targeted Esox in the basin.

Will

Will Roseberg wrote:

Hey Kyhl,

I have caught several large <em class=”ido-tag-em”>pike and muskies out there trolling for walleyes on Rapala TD-11 Deep Taildancers; however, I have never actually specifically targeted Esox in the basin.

Will

This is very untapped. In fact, I am heavily thinking about taking my boys to the Pond tomorrow to try trolling musky baits over the open water. The fish out there rarely see baits. Normally these fish don’t come near shore until Fall. Would sure be nice to get our hands on one of them.
Weather permitting and if the wife doesn’t have some other hair-brained home improvement idea, I will be taking the boys tomorrow.

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Will Roseberg wrote:</div>
Hey Kyhl,

I have caught several large <em class=”ido-tag-em”>pike and muskies out there trolling for walleyes on Rapala TD-11 Deep Taildancers; however, I have never actually specifically targeted Esox in the basin.

Will

This is very untapped. In fact, I am heavily thinking about taking my boys to the Pond tomorrow to try trolling musky baits over the open water. The fish out there rarely see baits. Normally these fish don’t come near shore until Fall. Would sure be nice to get our hands on one of them.
Weather permitting and if the wife doesn’t have some other hair-brained home improvement idea, I will be taking the boys tomorrow.

Good luck, hope you end up going as I would be curious how you did. I have to believe there are fish out there that are catchable.
Meanwhile the Garrison Sports launch boat camps in the weed areas in Garrison bay and does consistently get some large pike in their daily catch. Does kind of conflict with the theory that all the large pike move off shore to cooler water and chase tullibee.
Has been my observation and personal experience that more large pike are caught in the winter ice fishing.

Will,
What MPH do you deep water troll at and how much line do you let out?

Eelpoutguy wrote:

Will,
What MPH do you deep water troll at and how much line do you let out?

When I’m trolling walleyes I’m going between 1.8-2.2 mph and the feet of line out is usually between 95-135′.

When I troll pike and muskies (which I have not done in the basin on Mille Lacs) I’m going 3.5-5.0 mph and have between 30-85′ of line out depending on the lure.

Will

The weather mostly cooperated. Except for a quick shower on the south end Saturday evening, it was a great weekend. Looked like a soaker north of Garrison though. Seemed like that storm sat up there for an hour or more.

I tried it for a few hours Saturday afternoon. Found schools of bait fish deep, 35+ FOW and trolled a couple 8″ musky stick baits around the basin about 3.5mp with no luck. Eventually the rain chased me off in time for diner.

Marked quite a few fish laying on the bottom, guessing they were walleyes. Estimated that lures were about half way down, 15-20′. I didn’t want to get too close to the bottom where it could snag a banned golden fish.

It was a good learning experience. I can see how the walleye fishing with lead core would work. With the moon phase, I should have been out there at dusk hitting points but I just didn’t have it in me.

Kyhl wrote:

Eventually the rain chased me off in time for diner. With the moon phase, I should have been out there at dusk hitting points but I just didn’t have it in me.

There is certainly some pleasure in staying in with beer and just watching it all unfold from the comforts of a roof overhead.

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Beer might have been a contributing factor to my lack of ambition.