This should make my Friday go much faster. 
Kevin, welcome to IDO. I see you really like the Mille Lacs smallmouth subject.
Phil, I always knew you were genius. Seriously though, you are one talented writer.
Phil – If you are not a sci-fi novelist you’re in the wrong profession.
Alas, I am but a lowly statistician :(. I haven’t quite broken into the highly sought after and highly lucrative sci-fi novelist field yet :).
Well, yes as a matter of fact I’m glad you asked. Being that my ancestors were from the Scottish Highlands, I’d request Macallan 30. I prefer a single malt over a blended and furthermore I’ve already had plenty of all the options you mentioned.
I know you don’t get up to my neighborhood, so if you could just go ahead and send the Macallan 30 bottle in the mail…that’d be great.
Dangit! I just finished my bottle of Mac 30, drats. Just doesn’t look like it’s going to work out. I was gonna suggest a sample of the Macallan 50 I have sitting around somewhere(it’s easy to lose track of the bottom shelf stuff), but seems like you really had your heart set on the 30 :(.
On a serious note, if you ever are up in WBL/Mahtomedi area send me a head’s up and I will pour a sample of something for you! I have lots of bourbon too.
Winter fishing SMB on the Mississippi I was fishing suckers with just an octopus hook. No rig, no sinker, no float, no jig head, etc. If fishing shallow you may be able to get by with an incredibly simple setup.
Also…. Another JD appearance on this thread??
Also…. Another JD appearance on this thread??
I kind of got the same feeling. That is why I did not bother replying anymore to his comments.
Also…. Another JD appearance on this thread??
I’d hate to think that there is more than 1 with that kind of intelligence 
I am having severe anxiety attacks since reading about your diabolical plot. Marauding killer SMB unleashed in my favorite body of water, truly a heinous plan. I was lost in despair when it dawned on me a new player you had not counted on in your planning has emerged.
I put an emergency email to MNFISH and asked this legendary group of anglers to step in and stop this madness. I think I will be able to relax now.
No epic or story is complete with just a villain, every story needs a hero, and naturally, every villain leaves behind a pile of victims in their wake. Those victims, the poor, poor walleye anglers of Onamia have most at stake, and who will stand for them?
Long have their fathers, the stewards of the lake, kept the forces of smallmouth at bay. By the boats of their people, has your lake been kept safe.
These walleye anglers, banded together to make their last stand against the forces of evil. There, atop the green and gold parapet within their ‘Garrison’ they stand, outnumbered. As the night goes on and the rain continues to fall, their numbers dwindle. What can be done against such a hateful, horrific horde of bass anglers. But it’s always darkest before the dawn. Kevin Gross’ resolve sits atop a razor’s edge, with hope beginning to fade, he drops his shield.
“So much death, what can walleye anglers do against such reckless, sparkled fiberglass?”
He gathers his host and prepares one last charge, one last plunge, for no one wants to die cowering in fear, let there be songs sung about this day! Just then, with the sun beginning to rise from the east, a shimmering light appears across the water, it grows closer.
Just when all hope is lost, Al Lindner and the heroes of MNFish appear on the horizon, just as was foretold. They rain down on the bass anglers with unimaginable ferocity. They hit the boat ramp at unfathomable speed and launch into the air, over the parapet and into the bass anglers. It all happened so fast, they were not prepared for such a weapon.
As they fly into the horde, the leader of the bass anglers coalition finds himself in an unfortunate position. He looks up just in time to see the 4 blade stainless steel prop heading his direction. He does not have time to move, or shield himself from the blow, nor does he have time to notice that this prop is not pitched for speed or holeshot, it’s pitched specifically for removing someone’s head from their body.
As his head flies through the air, Al Lindner lets out a horrible war cry, and he bellows an order to his lieutenant, the one they call Babe.
“Get the Frabill!”
The battle is won, the bass anglers, as murderous and dangerous as they may be, are unable to stand together without their leader, whose head now sits in a blood soaked collection of snag-free netting. How ironic, how fitting, that this net designed to maximize the conservation of one species should be so capable of displaying the eradication of another. They scatter back into the swamps from which they came, where they will live a cold, broken life, void of hope or happiness.
Kevin Gross and his remaining soldiers rejoice. Many are wounded, many have perished, but after many busch light smoothies, they retire to their chambers knowing that the sun will burn brighter tomorrow than it has for some time. They have hope.
Little do they know that, as we now know, the damage is already done. And while the promise of a NEW Mille Lacs, led by a NEW coalition of angling heroes was what everyone was waiting for. They will come to turn on their heroes. Because they are the hero Onamia deserves, not the one it needs right now.
Emails will go unanswered, donations will disappear, murmurs of corruption and greed begin to surface. In the cold depths of an apocalyptic winter, Kevin holds onto hope. He seeks out the heroes from this long forgotten battle. He hikes through miles of forest and frozen tundra to find their fortress, the stronghold from which they manage the unstoppable powerhouse that is MNFish.
As he approaches the house, a light flickers on the basement. He is drawn to the light. He moves to an egress window, a building code necessity that has caused him so much pain and grief in his past life. Funny how that which has delivered so much frustration and heartache in the past, can come to deliver you the truth, at long last, the truth.
There in the window, on that cold, lifeless night, he finally has what he seeks. He sees the hero of yesteryear, Al Lindner sitting at the head of the table, surrounded by others he recognizes immediately, but it can’t be.
To his right is area fisheries manager Tom Heinrich, to his left, the leader of the Mille Lacs band of Ojibway, across the table, the ruthless and unyielding Winkelman. The governor is there also. At first it’s unclear what they are doing together in this dimly lit basement, but he has his answer.
Millions of dollars sit atop the table, and Al begins to distribute them evenly across all parties. Kevin understands, deep down he’s always suspected this, but not until now, not until this very moment does he actually believe it. There on the table are all the donations made to MNFish, every last dollar.
Behind Al sits a large monitor, displaying an email inbox. Kevin immediately sees a familiar message, a message he wrote earlier that day. The message he knows is unanswered, but never in a thousand years did he think it was unread. As he looks to the left he loses the last bit of restraint he was holding. Forgetting himself, forgetting the precarious situation he found himself in, as he discovers that his message sits unanswered, unread, the first message of many in this inbox, he screams. For this was no inbox, the location of this message is the trash folder, and it’s deletion cadence is swift, nightly.
They look to the window to discover the source of this scream, and there they find Kevin, beaten, broken, ready for it to end.
They pull him into the basement and that is the last breath of fresh air Kevin ever saw. His remains are never found, for no one would suspect the killers. And even if they did, would they know to check the stomach contents of the musky within Al Lindner’s aquarium?
Well done!!! 
I need a cigarette after that
Where is the GoFundMe for Phil to publish a fictional(?) angling adventure book? I’ll drop dough on it right now. Epic tale is all I can say.
Right prop pitch for severing heads, I can’t deal with it 
I need a cigarette after that
I need a drink…a scotch, think I’ll make it a double. 
Will-you mentioned shallow rocks-hump? Point? Deep stuff nearby?
Thanks
Where is the GoFundMe for Phil to publish a fictional(?) angling adventure book? I’ll drop dough on it right now. Epic tale is all I can say.
Right prop pitch for severing heads, I can’t deal with it
Gofundme my ass. I want some shares.
I’d be happy to start a go fund me.
On a completely separate and unrelated note, if someone starts a gofundme page and people donate, what happens if the person asking for money spends the money on something different than what they said they were going to?
On another completely separate note, I actually got up and fished Mille Lacs yesterday! I had some boat trouble, so we weren’t able to go far, but we fished out of the Shaw-Bush-kung landing and had an okay day. Caught a handful of smallmouth, a couple incidental walleye and got bit off by what I think was a pike.
Our best luck was just slip bobbers with suckers, most of the fish came in 9-12 feet of water. Biggest smallmouth was 20.75″. I can’t believe how big those fish are…
Does the smallmouth bite continue all the way up until the lake ices up? Or is there a water temp where they shut down or move to other locations? We had 64 degrees in the bay we were fishing.
Generally the bass bite shuts off around 50 degrees. Some people continue to try below that, but it becomes significantly more difficult. Bass go into a bit of a “hibernative” state in the winter. That’s why there are so few caught and when you do catch one, they are like a wet shoe coming in.
Phil, I literally registered on IDO’s forum just so that I could tell you how hard I laughed at your posts in this thread. Nice work…Nice work.
My favorite line: “what can walleye anglers do against such reckless, sparkled fiberglass?”
From my experience, the bite only gets better until water temps dip into the low 50’s, then it slowly tapers. Once she hits 55-58, they really get feisty.
Good luck everyone, have fun on the water!
Phil, I literally registered on IDO’s forum just so that I could tell you how hard I laughed at your posts in this thread. Nice work…Nice work.
My favorite line: “what can walleye anglers do against such reckless, sparkled fiberglass?”
From my experience, the bite only gets better until water temps dip into the low 50’s, then it slowly tapers. Once she hits 55-58, they really get feisty.
Good luck everyone, have fun on the water!
Welcome aboard Kevin, and thanks! I think you’ll find that this site is full of 100% like-minded individuals who always agree about everything and never get into arguments or anything.
And thanks for the heads up on water temps! I’m hoping to get back up there in 2 weeks, I have a LOTW trip this weekend to take care of first.
Any smallmouth statuses anyone can share? I’m probably heading up Sunday to sling some suckers for smallies. I’ll report back if I get out.
I noticed how you managed to leave out the most diabolical part of your long term plan. Decimating the Mille Lacs walleye population is only the acorn from which the mightiest of oak grows. The Arian race of SMB you’ve developed will work its way down the rum river, interbreeding with that SMB population creating a super race of walleye killers, eventually turning Pool 2 and then the entirety of Pool 4 into a gamefish wasteland filled with trash fish like SMB & LMB, carp and sheepshead.
Any smallmouth statuses anyone can share? I’m probably heading up Sunday to sling some suckers for smallies. I’ll report back if I get out.
I was up mid-September and we got into them pretty good on some of those west side spots I PM’d you on big sucker minnows w/ bullet sinker lindy’s in 12-15 fow. Find the rocks!
<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>philtickelson wrote:</div>
Any smallmouth statuses anyone can share? I’m probably heading up Sunday to sling some suckers for smallies. I’ll report back if I get out.I was up mid-September and we got into them pretty good on some of those west side spots I PM’d you on big sucker minnows w/ bullet sinker lindy’s in 12-15 fow. Find the rocks!
Do you prefer to just drift with those rigs or use a trolling motor? I tried doing that(with just a normal lindy sinker) and probably had 4-5 bites but missed every single hookset :(.
Wind forecast isn’t looking great for Sunday, looks like it could be windy, still hoping to make the trip though!
Do you prefer to just drift with those rigs or use a trolling motor?
Depends a lot on the wind, whatever you need to do to keep it between .8 and 1.2 mph.
Phil … when I feel the tap of the bite, I just give them the rod length and wait for them to load it up. They hook themselves most times, and rarely gets deep.
I made it out there yesterday on the west side, it was pretty windy!
We caught some nice fish, but it really shut down about noon, I’m thinking we would have had a great day if we would have been on the water by 7 AM or so. We had one spot where we caught 5 fish in about 2 minutes, including a triple, which was a blast.
We had three smallmouth between 19-20″, and two over 20″.
Also had a bonus 22″ and 27″ walleye thrown in for good measure!
We were fishing shallow, like 10-12 feet, but it appeared that most other boats were fishing deeper. A guy was launching as we were pulling out of the water and he said he’s been fishing like 20-26 ft this week. We definitely didn’t try anywhere near that deep.
We were just spot locked with slip bobbers. We did almost get hit by another boat that inexplicably trolled within about 12 feet of us, at extremely slow speed. If you were in a white Alumacraft(I think), with 4 people in it that almost ran over our bobbers, wtf were you doing?
Forgot to mention, water temp was 54.5 degrees on the west side yesterday.
We were just spot locked with slip bobbers. We did almost get hit by another boat that inexplicably trolled within about 12 feet of us, at extremely slow speed. If you were in a white Alumacraft(I think), with 4 people in it that almost ran over our bobbers, wtf were you doing?
That’s within range of my washdown sprayer.
We were just spot locked with slip bobbers. We did almost get hit by another boat that inexplicably trolled within about 12 feet of us, at extremely slow speed. If you were in a white Alumacraft(I think), with 4 people in it that almost ran over our bobbers, wtf were you doing?
Hey now, I’ve been trolling that line for the last 30 years. How dare you fish in my way, especially for those worthless bass.
<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>philtickelson wrote:</div>
We were just spot locked with slip bobbers. We did almost get hit by another boat that inexplicably trolled within about 12 feet of us, at extremely slow speed. If you were in a white Alumacraft(I think), with 4 people in it that almost ran over our bobbers, wtf were you doing?Hey now, I’ve been trolling that line for the last 30 years. How dare you fish in my way, especially for those worthless bass.
LOL, I knew it! I can understand the trouble, given the distance between boats and the speed, you only had 25 minutes to slightly alter your course to avoid hitting us.
It’s the DNR’s fault. They allow us to keep one measly walleye in a tiny slot window, then it’s catch and release, then they shut down walleye completely. The heck if I’m going to travel off course of MY trolling line for anyone.
Good to hear that you made it out and catch some nice fish.
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