I went up to Mille Lacs last weekend with a buddy and his dad and managed to catch a few nice eyes out there.
We were fishing about 4 1/2-miles out of Garrison Sports. We went off the end of their road and found a small hump on the end of Pelbergs Flat. And set up the wheel house in 26 feet of water.
Fishing was pretty good for me. I caught a couple 10-inch perch. I also caught 14, 15, 18 1/2, 20, 20 1/2, 21, 23, and 24-inch walleyes. I had a few other pretty nice ones on that got off about half way up.
Matt only caught one 10-inch walleye, and Mark just caught the one 27 1/4-incher.
I caught the 2 perch and 1 20-incher outside Friday night and then went in at dark. We marked tons of fish Friday night in the house but they wouldn’t bite. When we turned the lights out around 9:30 the rattle reels started going down every 15-30 minutes. I had a couple on but lost them, and ended up missing 6 fish over night. Mark missed and lost a few and then caught the 27 1/4-incher.
Saturday morning I caught the 14- and 15-inchers and a couple bigger ones.
We drilled holes all over the hump we were on and didn’t catch another fish until Saturday evening when I caught the 23- and 24- inchers. Didn’t hardly mark anything in the house Saturday night, missed one on the rattle reel and then caught a 20-incher over night. Caught an 18-incher in the morning and that was it. Left the lake around 9:30 in the morning.
The key to catching these fish was to jig about 3-4 feet off the bottom. Seemed they all wanted a little different action, only had 2 fish come in and smack it. The rest were up and down until you found the action they liked.
Perch colored lures worked best for me, caught most of them on a perch colored varmint spoon. Also caught a couple on a No. 7 firetiger colored jigging rap tipped with a minnow head. Jigged hard to attract them in and just let it sit to trigger a strike.
The set line that got hit the most had a chartreuse bead at the hook and was set 3 feet off the bottom tipped with a shiner minnow.
