I fought the wind and waves for a Mille Lacs outing on Saturday afternoon/evening. After hitting the big pond 16 times between opener and August 3rd, this was my first ML outing in over a month.
Things have changed quite a bit while I was away. First, this is probably little surprise to most but the fish aren’t jumping in the boat now. We pulled cranks on 7 Mile and later moved in to a rock reef and only managed three 22-23″ walleyes all day. That is a full 19 walleyes under my previous low for the year. It is amazing how that hot bite could inflate the ‘ole ego but whatever ego I had is safely deflated back where it belongs now.
Second, the fish looked great. I worried about the health of Mille Lacs walleyes as much as anyone this spring and summer. We caught so many skinny, sore laden fish. I smelled a potential “crash” just like everyone else. The few fish we did catch on Saturday looked chubby and healthy.
It was a real excersize in boat control with the wind and big waves but we stuck it out into the evening. On one occasion, a big wave happened to whitecap just as it got to the side of the boat. My nephew was looking the other way and the combination of the sound and a bit of the wave splashing on his back startled him out of a fishless daze. Pretty funny. Of course, things started to calm down just as we gave up for the night.