Smallmouth bass

I just talked with a friend that has been catching some smallmouth bass on the eastside of Mille Lacs? He said that they have been catching them on minnows in 28 feet of water. He has his house out of Hunters Point on the Banana bar reef.
He said that he has also seen them swiming around on the under water cammera!!!!!!

Do they jump?

I’d believe it! I’m guessing he’s seeing alot as well… knowing their tendency to form large schools while wintering. If you catch one this time of year… there probably is many more in the area.

Sound like you guys are catching everything but walleyes up there.

Quote:

---

Do they jump?

---

If you find some with sores on their noses, they will pronably be the ones that were trying to jump…

Do they jump!

I have caught bass in the winter on small panfish lakes, but I can’t remember ever hearing of one caught on Mille Lacs before in the winter. Any other reports out there of this happening?

Upper Clear Lake, down by the river bottoms, a few years ago. We were tip-up fishing for pike. I hooked a good fish and was pulling it in, I felt a “thump”.

Then it started to come in much easier.

I pulled in a 6lb largemouth. She was a bit “limp”. We did revive her and she swam off. We figured that she swam up, since the water was a bit shallow, and hit her mellon on the ice!!!!!!!!!

We manage a few largemouth every year on tip ups. We’ve got them as deep as 30′ before.

Ya, but in Mille Lacs Lake?

Quite a few years ago we were on the reef south west of Big Point and pulled out a nice 3 lb smallie in 28′ of water. That is the only one I saw in many years of fishing the Big Point area.
Dino

I’ve seen lots of largemouth taken through the ice but,never a smallie.I guess Mille Lacs would be one of the places for it to happen but,it must be a fairly rare occurence.Anyone know why?

Well I just got off the lake and had to get a post back up on the smallmouth. I headed out this afternoon to my buddy Steve’s house here on the eastside of Mille Lacs. His house is on a reef around 2 miles off shore in 21 feet of water.

Well yes, he has smallmouth swimming around under his house……..in fact I caught one about 2 lbs!
And yes…….for you folks that may have had dought? We video taped about 2 hours of the activity with an under water camera! I will need some help from maybe Jon J. and get this edited to a MPEG movie!!!!!and we will post it here on IDA. Hope that might be possible?
We also video taped some large schools of the small perch that are also swimming in Mille Lacs. We saw some huge schools that took minutes for them to swim past the camera.
These perch varied in size from smaller than our minnows to around 5-6 inches.
The lighting was getting poor when we left to come in. He plans to video tape more tommorrow morning.

We will have to see how this all works out!