Mille Lacs East side for the week ending 1/4/04

I spent the last week fishing on Mille Lacs. The fishing on the east side has been very slow if not completly dead for me. Monday I fished the shallow rocks in 16 feet of water. The fish biting were 6 inch perch. I watched a couple walleyes come through on the underwater camera but neither was interested in my presentation. A Creel census taker stopped by mid morning, he said he had been working the east side since Friday. He said he had checked only one house with a legal fish under 17 inches since then, it was a sixteen incher. He also said that there were very few fish reported being caught. We ended up with 2 keeper perch.
Tuesday afternoon I ventured out a couple miles to one of my favorite perch holes. GPS was in order as none of the resorts were out to that area of the lake. Once again nothing great, one small walleye, and a few small perch. The camera showed me fish present, but again suffering from lock jaw they wouldn’t bite.
Wednesday I spent on the 2 mile reef, I fished water depths from 26-32 feet. I watched fish at all depths that I fished. One thing that surprised me was on top of the rock reef how many crayfish were present. No fish were caught this day, not even a perch.
Thursday I decided to go even farther out on the lake. I worked my way out to three mile off of Big Point. I started deep off the edge in 32 feet, and by 2:30 worked up to 28 feet on the edge of a rock ledge that looked very promising as I had already picked up a few perch. This was about when my day was cut short, literally. I was picking things up, figuring I’d gut it out in this spot for the rest of the day when while putting the guard on my laser mag, I slit the end of my thumb open. Well, five Band-Aids later I contained the bleeding and was off to visit nurse Kath for a second opinion and some first aid.
Friday my son came up and we went back out to 3 mile to cover some more of it. We worked tip-ups around as well as jigging while watching the camera. As prior trips out, there is an abundance of 4-6 inch perch in the lake. By the time the mist and fog moved in late in the day, we were only able to land 1 walleye and 1 eelpout. We used Shiners on the tip-ups and heads and tails jigging weasels and kastmasters. The tails produced best for us, but none of the perch were keeper size.
The ice is plenty thick, but very rough in places and took lots of maneuvering around ice heaves at times to get out 3 miles. I suggest using a trailer behind your ATV to transport fishtraps or otters with all the rough ice. I will be back at it later this week. Hopefully Bob is recovered and can get back out too.

I was also on the east side of the big pond throughout the weekend. On 01/01 three of us were on a 15′ rock bar, one on, two on both sides in 18′. Between three portables we iced up two fish, 26″ wally and a 36″ northern. Friday we got our fish houses out and put them about 2 miles out on some rock piles and fared pretty well. Friday night we ended up icing 8 walleyes throughout the night 27″ biggest. Sat. we ended up getting some bigger perch and a bunch of 12″ walleyes and a couple of mid 20’s wallys. Sunday mourning yeilded us only one fish a 29″ walleye at around 9:30 that came in at 9 1/2 pounds. These fish seemed to be extremley healthy and fat as their body could be. The 12 perch we took home were all 12″ or over. They are now letting vehicles out on the east side.

LARS

Way to go Lars!

Overall the reports are slow, it sounds like you may have found a spot with some active fish on it. Question: how late in the night did the walleye bite?

Thanks for the report……..keep em’coming

Hey Bob,

On Friday they bit throughout the night started at the typical sunset and then the first fish after that flurry came at 7:00. The 27″ came in at 11:30 that night and then we had two more runs after that, a 24″ wally and another fish that got off. So they actually stayed decently active during the no light phase, although the moon was shinin’ over the weekend.