More Mille Lacs pics~~

I have spent some considerable time up the big pond over the last 10 days and seen several bites take shape over this period. Throughout the pictures to come here, I will give a little info on where and how these fish were caught.
Starting out here is Shawn Jonhson holding a nice walleye while we pre-fished the day before the MTT event that took place on May 31st and June 1st. This fish was taken trolling crankbaits with planer baords just adjacent to a popular deep gravel bar. These fish were holding tight to this piece of structure and putting these crankbaits just off the top edges of this gravel bar produced several nice walleyes during our pre-fishing day.

Here is another fish that fell victim to our next very trolling pass.

A couple days later after the MTT tournament brought myself back to the lake once again to pre-fish for the Mille Lacs lake Wave Wacker tournament. Here is a picture of my guest for the day John Nordenstrom with a nice crankbait trolling fish that hit a Deep Suspending Smithwick Rogue on a planer board. This particular fish came from trolling real close to a nearby rock point on the west side of the lake. Our crankbaits would graze water that ranged from 22-25 foot of water. Putting our cranks just off the bottom appeared to be what the fish were looking for this day. Again planer boards became a very useful tool as the waters became dead calm and the fish became a little spooky of the boat passing over them.

Here is John with another cookie cutter fish that came from just a bit deeper in the 28-31foot range. Soon after the shallower fish started to move off the area that we were trolling, I decided to make a ass just off the structure in the little deeper water. After moving out a bit I started to mark fish well off the bottom and decided to raise our lures up in the water column and immediately got bit with another nice walleye. This is a bite that has been a little spotty in the recent days with some real good days followed by days of short periodic activity.

In the most recent days the trolling bite has continued to be very spotty and less consistant with some good paced action followed by longer lulls of slower activity. The mud flats and deep gravel lindy rigging bites has the been the most consistant bite here is recent days. 7 and 9 mile has seen some good action in the last 3 days. Pictured below is Mark Vansguard that hoists the first fish of the day this morning on a near by rigging sand/rock transition off of Indian Point. Nice fish Mark!

Joining us also this morning was Marks son Joe. Here is a nice father/son picture of another nice rigging fish caught by Mark…..Joe, next time stay clear of Taco Bell before a trip to the big pond! JK!

Thanks again guys, it was a fun and way too quick of a morning.

Here is one last picture of Mark from this morning as we took a little break from the rigging bite and decided to troll some crankbaits for a few fish that were holding tight to the bottom in 25 foot of water. I will be off the water tommorrow as its a rest day and Monday morning I will be back up on the lake to joing the fine folks from Pradco to put some of the best running crankbaits in the business to work!