First down the hole

Going up to Mille Lacs for 3 days for walleye, checking my tackle..
Which of these would be your first choice to call them in (jigging) when the other hole is a dead stick/or rattle reel?
Day or night…

1. UL Rippin Rap (pink tiger,glow perch,firetiger)
2. Slab rap (Glow hot perch)
3.Lindy Rattl’n flyer (firetiger)
4 VMC Tumbler spoon (perch, glow green tiger, glow pink fire, glow green fire)
5 VMC flashchamp (glow goldfish)
6 VMC tungston mongo jig (glow chartreuse)
7 VMC glow resin treble (glow chartreuse)
8 Slender spoon (glow)
9 Treble with beads and small spinner blade
10 Demon glow (fire, lime)

Of those choices, #4 perch with a minnow head.

Other choice not on the list. VMC or Northland Rattle spoons. (Buckshot rattle spoon) Gold or Perch color. Upsize the hook one size.

Might be just me, but I have never had any luck with glow baits on Milly.

-J.

Don’t overlook Sweedish Pimples either. On Millie I always have silver with green prism on a rod ready to go.

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If you are marking fish I’d go #4 in gold, if you’re not #1 glow perch

I’d also say #4 in glow goldfish. I’ve never had any other lure out perform that spoon and color combination on Mille Lacs. Other than that it’s a rippin rap. Both of these next to my deadstick.

#4 Pink UV.
#1 Pink UV.

Can you tell I like Pink?

Start big and aggressive. The fish will tell you if you need to tone it down.

they are hungry. I wouldn’t worry too much… Have Fun!

VMC Tingler in glow goldfish. Out fished everything else 4-1 last weekend.

Thought I would update…
Fri 1 p.m. to Sun 8 a.m. 1/11-1/13.

My son and I, fishing in four holes, all fishing inside a rented house from Macs.
Gravel 26 feet of water. Macs is plowed out 6 miles, road is good.

Using an underwater camera for the first time to keep the teenager happy.

1-2 p.m. nothing on camera, no bites Various flutter, tingler spoons with fathead minnow head and 2 rattle reels (plain hooks) one with 3 1/2 inch pike and 1 with a 5 inch sucker (no shiners available anywhere).

2 p.m. switched to UL Rippinrap (perch color) to call them in with noise.
Lots of Walleye lookers come by, scared off my anything more than a jiggle when they are close. When they are off the screen I give the Rippin Rap a few more rips and they come in again, slow the presentation but no bites , they will look at the flutter spoon and Rippin Rap jiggling or still.

4 PM. First one hits (18 incher) on a firetiger Rippen Rap. Ambushes it from below and inhales it after keeping it still with an occasional jiggle. 4 more landed in the next hour and a half (16,19,7,19,inch) by a slow presentation VMC Tumbler spoon in glow goldfish tipped with fathead head. Switched the Rippin Rap out for several tumbler/flash spoons, but they only want the glow goldfish. At sunset only one more hits a jig (19.5) and we tried several colors sizes etc. We pick up 2 more (17 and 20 inch) on the rattle reels…bare hook or red/glow demon. Failed to land about 7 others on the rattle reels (Suckers and pike minnows) from 10:00 p.m. to 2 A.M…get them half way to the hole and they get off. We are pretty inexperienced with setting the hooks in walleye under the ice…besides jigging.

Saturday morning lookers but no takers using nearly all my tackle listed above. Caught 2 on the pink tiger rippin rap (17,15) and one on the glow goldfish tumbler (16). Long lunch…

Lookers but only one landed around 4 p.m. (21 and 1/4 inch keeper!) on the glow goldfish tumbler. Same M.O….Rippin Rap calls them in, but will scare them off if anymore than a jiggle is applied.

10 p.m. rattle reels go off again, we miss several then we give them 1-5 minutes at this point before setting the hook…5 inch sucker minnows. My boy lands a fat 24 1/2 incher and a 26 incher.

Final tally…
-UL Rippin rap (pink tiger 2 fish, firetiger color 1) inhaled it, and called fish in; but slow it to a jiggle when marking.

-Glow Goldfish tumbler 7 fish. Slow presentation. killer at dusk.

Rattle reel 5 inch suckers #4 glow Demon worked best (5 fish). All caught by letting them run a long time. Better fisherman would have caught twice or 3 times as many with a better timed hook set and/or special minnow rigging. The biggest fish were caught this way.

15 fish…18,16,10,7,19,20,19.5,17,20,17.16,15,21,24.5,26.

Minnows after dusk, slow jig/spoon 4-6 p.m., Rippin rap to call in but just jiggle when marking. VMC Glow Goldfish tumbler to seal the deal. Resort worker said gold was getting the best result in all the houses.

Thanks for everyone helping me with advice. My teenager had a blast!

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Heading up Sunday with my 11 year old and pup out of Mac’s so thanks for an awesome report! I hope to jig as much as I can but planning on going with minnows under a float with demons tied to a rattle wheel so we can fight them on a rod. I hate the hand over hand crap. Front moving in but we got a full moon which should level the playing field….can’t wait!

Good job on the follow up and posting your report.

I was up there on Sat 1/12 also and found similar results. Everyone said to go big and aggressive but that was not the case for us. Nothing all afternoon until about 4:30pm we got our first fish. Two on shiners under bobbers and two on smaller jigging spoons with minnow heads. Wanted a slow presentation. Biggest fish was 25.5 inches, had a fun time.

Hey lindy….or others?

Where can I find shiners near south of ML? I heard lots of places don’t have em….tia

Appreciate the report! Looks like I need to buy more glow goldfish.

Interested in bait stops as well as I’m taking the wife, 3yo, and 1yo up there this coming Sat and Sun for our first wheelhouse trip.

eyeguy507 wrote:

Hey lindy….or others?

Where can I find shiners near south of ML? I heard lots of places don’t have em….tia

I would give a call to Prince bait in Milaca… I would expect they should have them but better to double check if you’re looking for something specific.

eyeguy507 wrote:

Hey lindy….or others?

Where can I find shiners near south of ML? I heard lots of places don’t have em….tia

Shiners are scarce right now. When fish lake bait in Harris doesn’t have them, then you know that nobody in any surrounding area will.

Awesome report back from the op. Great that you and the kid got in to some nice fish. Looks like you entertained the teen plenty. I remember a post a while back worrying about that.

mndadandson wrote:

Rattle reel 5 inch suckers #4 glow Demon worked best (5 fish). All caught by letting them run a long time. Better fisherman would have caught twice or 3 times as many with a better timed hook set and/or special minnow rigging. The biggest fish were caught this way.

Two thoughts come to mind… You may have been using too small of hooks and the hook was getting buried in the minnows back versus the fishes mouth or you were dealing with relatively smaller fish that would grab the minnow but not have it fully in it’s mouth resulting in a poor hooking percentage.

The best advice for hook setting on set lines with larger minnows is to let the fish run until it stops and then wait until it starts moving again. If the fish just grabs the bait and continues to run without stopping this is frequently a larger fish and will have the bait in its mouth as soon as they grab it. If they don’t stop within about 30 seconds I will just set the hook.

Personally I prefer to error on the side of setting quickly and missing a fish rather than letting the fish run too long and gut hooking them.

Will

Surprisingly, Prince’s Bait did not have any shiners.

I found some at Jerry’s in Mora.

But yes, I would buy them before leaving if possible.

Francis K wrote:

Don’t overlook Sweedish Pimples either. On Millie I always have silver with green prism on a rod ready to go.

This was my buddies sons best bait last weekend he smoked us. only he had one liked it at the bait shop so daddy bought it.

Two thoughts come to mind… You may have been using too small of hooks and the hook was getting buried in the minnows back versus the fishes mouth or you were dealing with relatively smaller fish that would grab the minnow but not have it fully in it’s mouth resulting in a poor hooking percentage.

The best advice for hook setting on set lines with larger minnows is to let the fish run until it stops and then wait until it starts moving again. If the fish just grabs the bait and continues to run without stopping this is frequently a larger fish and will have the bait in its mouth as soon as they grab it. If they don’t stop within about 30 seconds I will just set the hook.

Personally I prefer to error on the side of setting quickly and missing a fish rather than letting the fish run too long and gut hooking them.

Will

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Thanks,
After a many misses I switched out to a #4 Demon, that one did hook better along with setting up another rattle reel with treble. We were probably setting the hook too early on most of the early misses as well. I actually remembered the run-stop-run pattern on the last 3 sets, a little late…All 3 were brought in successfully (21, 24 and 26 inch). The 24 inch “ran” slowly for 4-5 minutes then stopped and ran again…hooked on the lip! I have never gut hooked a walleye in my life, so it didn’t even occur to me. Unfortunately the last fish (26 inch) was gut hooked after we waited for the run-stop-run about 1 and a half minutes. Usually in the summer we just feed slack and count 15-20 seconds.

Really hit us both hard since we had to release it that way. I tried my best to remove the hook minimizing the damage to the fish (my hand did not fair as well as the fish).

After we came home I googled how to remove a hook from a walleye gut. The In-fisherman link was broken. If you have a technique it would be great if you could post it. I have heard leaving it in can also create big problems.

Slot limits are so frustrating! We always keep and eat injured fish on other lakes. I explained to my son that even if it dies, other fish will probably be fed by it.

We will be setting a 30 second limit going forward.

if the fish is gut hooked
Take a pair of dykes and just cut the hook out as best you can without ripping and tearing. odds of the fish surviving with part of a hook stuck in his gullet are much better than if you take the pliers and start ripping the hook out also on a rattle reel you should not use a treble I have found the wide gap or circle hooks tend to work just as good if not better.

The bait shop owner told us that no shiners are available in Minnesota. He complained that you can no longer import them to MN because of DNR regs.

I have read that some bait shop owners in Wisconsin years ago were charged with importing shiners. They can carry disease.

Lite suckers worked well. Pike minnows worked, but not as well on our trip. Rainbows were available at one local bait shop, but not the other, we didn’t try them.

Thanks for the tip…
After seeing a GIGANTIC northern on the camera, my boy wanted to switch to the largest suckers we had, with a treble. The 26 inch walleye took that sucker. I was unaware of the risk with a treble.

Wouldn’t the same risk occur for using treble targeting Northerns? Everone I know uses a treble when fishing for Northern under a tip-up or bobber.