Smallie Bite

How has the bite been?

Shoot slider a PM to make sure he see’s this. He’s probably been up. (Without inviting me again! )

Actually, I think Slider HAS NOT been up???????

He is heading for Family Vacation week this coming Friday tomorrow)!

I was up on monday fishing ski’s on lots of shallow rocks and would toss out a husky jerk here and there and only picked up 3. all nice ones never took a ruler to them but they were all 17-19. with the wind they weren’t on top thats for sure!

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How has the bite been?

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The bite is going from what I hear, search and you shall find.
PM sent

Was out first thing this morning for a couple of hours. Couldn’t get them to go on top, and that’s all that matters. Did get a 18.5″ off the front of a dock Zoom Super Fluke and one on an X-Rap on a rock hump.

Has anyone been able to get some topwater action in?

2 weeks ago we threw for a couple of hours and got a 15″ and 19.5 on tube jigs. No bites on surface. All rock pile fishing.

Last week we spent 2 hours throwing at the rock pile and had 5 rise on a Ribot Frog, none latched on.

PointMan

i am kinda new to smallie fishing on mille lacs. i know i live on the lake and i have done it a lot in the past but i can count how many i have cought in the past 4 years on one hand. anyone think they can kinda give me some pointers on how to begin fishing them? thanks in advance. i am not looking for any special spots just a general idea on what to do to try to catch a few.

Went out tonight for 90 Min., probably while you were Muskie fishing. Got one 18″, one 12″, and 3 hits. 18″ came out of reeds, 12″ came in shallow rocks.

We’re new to this stuff as well but have had fairly good luck on various baits. Near you we have fished the rocks to the north of Spider Island and also Gull Reef in front of Lyback’s. We started with tube baits concentrating on the edges of the rocks, biggest rocks are best from what I can tell. However I’ve switched to various soft top water baits on 3/0 hooks. This presentation allows for much less time stuck in the rocks.

It certainly does seem if you spend time working the rock piles, soon enough one of the monsters will grab on.

PointMan

if it’s anything like the Mississippi north of Sartell…. it has to be slow. I can’t buy a decent fish right now and was thinking of heading up to Mille Lacs my self. my guess is 1-2 more weeks before they start to p/u

Saturday the bite was fair to decent. Most of the smallies are post spawn right now and transitioning to their normal summer haunts. A few fish can still be found on the beds. With the major bug hatch, lots of fish can be seen picking fish flies off of the surface but the topwater bite for me has been non-existent. We were catching “roamers” throwing soft plastics to the rock piles and working the baits real slow. We spent a lot of time searching for areas that held fish, but when we caught one there was an entire school with it.

On another note, we did see a guy “well” about an eighteen incher, and he mentioned he had been catching them the last weeks drifting with leeches. After we explained the rules he shrugged us off and went back to fishing. We called TIP but no one showed after an hour. This is my third call to TIP in the last year. Just once I would like to see someone show up and fine people keeping smallies.

I was up there all of last week and found the same as you. (sort of ) Most fish are post spawn, some spawning still, like you said. However….I got into three large schools on Friday that bit topwater ALL day , 37 fish between 3 areas on top. Got a handful of others on tubes. Started with a spook and only got a couple. Then, as I was staring at a bed below my boat I stopped working the spook. As it sat there a smallie smashed it. So I changed to a pop R and it was game on all day. even in the wind