Mille Lacs-Opener??

So how did it go up on Mille Lacs this weekend. Know the rain and wind was probably a little brutal, but know everyone did NOT stay home. Many fish, any big ones, any good stories, any continued family traditions upheld?????
Jack..

It was the typical rainy, windy and wild weekend. Not enough sleep, to much rain and just enough fishing. But the fish fry, staff and friends smart talk was great!

I hear JLDII was looking to go a couple rounds with the champ saturday night?

I was lucky enough to be invited to the Big D classic and the Hukreides took me in like normal. Put a roof over my head and fed us like kings. The weather was cold and rainy but the fish sure cooperated. I considered it a very good bite. We has lots of fish over the 20″ slot, biggest in the 24.5″ range. The lake also has a hug year class of 14-15.5″ fish. Not sure we’ll get many pics from the different crews due to the amount of rain we got.

G, where are you boots??

Was up at the pond this weekend. Headed out Sat. early for some rigging on some east side rocks with moderate success. Between the downpours…gusty winds….and cold, we managed to catch a handful of walleyes.(biggest was 26) The fish we did find on the rocks were hammering the leech…like derek said in his report, by the time you tried feeding them line, they dropped it. So we too closed the bail and starting just giving them the rod tip. We moved off the rocks into the sand/gravel transitions on sat. and found the fish stacked up. We had no problem sorting through fish to get enough for a fish fry. We headed back out sunday to the same area and found the fish still holding off the rock piles in this deeper water transition areas. We caught fish from 14 inches to 27 and every inch in between on sat./sun. It was great to see so many year classes. By the looks at the cleaning station were we stayed, everyone was catching limits or close to it. It should be a great year on the pond.

Yeah, we put the smack down on the fish too. Saw lots of fish between 14.5″ and 15.5″. We did manage limits for my buddy and I by 1 p.m. on Saturday. I think we hit every whole digit between 14″ and 20″. We fished the sand with leeches from both directions of the Malmo public access.

It was a great experience for my buddy who does not fish much if at all. It does not get much better then catching active fish on the sand with a rig and leech.

Kooty, they are on the dock in D’s pond, next to the natives…

big g

I fished with Winston until 3:00 on Sat and we caught 18 walleyes during that time. Per his e-mail the total for the group was 43 walleyes with Jim G. coming in with the biggest at 28+ inches. We were fishing an area we found last year away from the crowds, or we were until we netted our 10th fish or so that morning. I was having trouble hooking up until I discovered that there was no bead between the no snag sinker and the swivel. Added the bead and the catch rate improved dramatically.

Here’s a couple of pictures of 23″ers. Not bragging size but just to show the conditions out there.

Winston’s 23.5″. But notice the shoreline. Think the boat was bouncing? Funny all the water didn’t run out of the lake.

We pulled cranks from 12 to 330 am on sat, pulled approx. 20 eyes ranging from 12″-25″, missed lots of short strikers also. Went out Sat afternoon 4 pm, pulled spinners on the sand for a couple hours, boated 10 or so. biggest there was 24″. Moved on to cranks again at dark, boated about 15, biggest was 24″ again. Didn’t get out Sun until 1 pm., fished till 3 pm, pulled spinners again, caught our limits and went home. Pigged out on fish all weekend, fish were snapping and the weather wasn’t all that bad, we’ve had worse weather on opener. All in all, fun weekend.

BIRDDOG

Thanks Guys,
With all the weather to contend with, those are some very good fishing results and pictures,
Keep those reports and stories coming.

Jack…

isn’t there a night ban in effects on mille lacs? i thought you had to be off the water by 10pm and couldn’t be on it until sun up. i am thinking of something that is not in effect yet (because i would love to troll some cranks at night if i can)

The night ban went into effect last night at 10:00PM.