With the recent drop in air temps I knew the Mille Lacs fall trolling run has to be getting started soon. Bigfife and I decided that tonight (09/30) was the night to give it a try…..Good news water is cooling off. Bad news was the wind. The Lake is stirred up very well. Once again all wind/weather reports said 10mph ESE wind….Well I think they were off by about 10 mph. Its very tough to predict what the weather will do on Mille Lacs, so I like to personally drive up to the lake check out conditions and make my decision where to fish based on what the lake looks like at that time. Using the resources of the internet to gauge where your going to fish on Mille Lacs can often times lead you the WRONG side. We choose the Red Door as our launching place, with the protective harbor (thank you). We were greeted with a fishable direct east wind and waves, a quick glance at the 60 degree water temps told me that this fish still may want the bent lips or stick baits. Started running stick baits, tried to keep my speed around 1.8-2.0 mph but with trolling with the wind made it difficult. After 1 quick pass with the wind I knew I wasn’t going to be able to dial in the speed the best so I switched to a #9 SSR bent lip. Wind started to blow more and more, which made keeping a constant speed very difficult. We finally hooked up with a solid 18.5″ fish that crushed the bait, which turns out to be our only walleye of the night. We battled for about 3.5 more hours. In between we landed 2 very respectable pike, 33-35″ in fish. After a while of fishing in the 3 foot waves we decided that that was enough. I was dissapointed in the weather conditions we were faced with, however that is fishing and you have to fish according to the elements mother nature gives you. We are not very far away from the fantastic bite everyone is waiting for, however I do hope this weather stabilizes a little bit otherwise this fall bite will be over before it even starts.
It was still a fun night fishing with someone from IDO, that I never fished with before. Thanks again Bigfife. 
October 1, 2009 at 3:13 pm
#1287550
That stupid Northern really went crazy in the net. 
I probably shouldn’t have done that, as its not too often I get to ride anymore and let someone else try to battle the waves and hold a steady speed.
