I was lucky enough to get out again to enjoy the balmy temps and hungry fish over the weekend on Mille Lacs with Kellie and fellow IDO’r Washburn. The calendar said January, but it sure felt like March as we were able to spend the weekend outside hole hopping in sweatshirts!
Judging by the amount of new holes our spots from last week had been hit pretty hard recently… We even had two groups come walking through pulling their house and gear between our house and my tip-ups then they set up within 30-40 ft on each side of us!?! 
So we decided to give up on the shallow water bite 
and head out to deeper water.
This was Kellie’s first time ice fishing ‘Eyes so I REALLY wanted to get her on some fish… Luckily after a quick stop at the Goose for Bloodies/Beer it didn’t take long for us to find a sand/mud transition holding fish in 26 FOW and it was game on 
Between 5 of us we iced 44 eyes and 4 perch on Saturday in just 3 hours! Then on Sunday morning we had 28 eyes and over a dozen perch before we headed out just after noon. 
Washburn absolutely crushed them on a hot perch rattlin’ flyer and Kellie did AMAZING with her hot pink macho minnow. She even went elbow deep to save a keeper that came unhooked right as she pulled it though the hole 
Hot lures are attached. Deadsticks and tip-ups produced 30-40% of our fish. Targeting “keeper” eyes this weekend we used large fatheads with a plain chartruese hook on the deadsticks and very small sucker minnows with a plain red hook on tip-ups 
As if it couldn’t get any better I also had the pleasure of chatting with and meeting a few new IDO members… All in all a pretty darn good January weekend!
MM
& good job on putting the hammer down.
