Was able to get work off on Friday and Saturday, so made a quick run up to the pond to see if we could catch anything. Friday morning was able to leave Anoka around 8am and traffic was already starting to pick up on 169. Swung into Princes to pick up some bait and then continued to head north. Tony my buddy from Duluth was going to meet me for some sunfish action north of the pond until later in the afternoon when we figured we would trailer down and hit the night bite. After a couple delays we finally were able to meet up and hit the water around noon. Well i would say that we missed the sunfish spawn about a week with alot of empty beds and water temps at 75 degrees. Not to be discouraged we continued to hunt through the bullrushes finding pockets of fish here and there. The great thing was that these where the fish that we were looking for, as in we where getting some nice ones. Biggest on the day for myself was a 11 1/8″ that i estimated at 1.2 to 1.3 lbs. I have a little mail scale that goes to a pound and this baby bottomed it out no problem. Tony had one that was a 1.0 lbs even and we had an easy 30 others that went 11oz on up. All in all great fun and no small fish….everything we caught was 8 oz and over, and we had 6 that ended up having to come home for dinner because they were not going to make it. Go to bait was little green GULP twister tail, half a crawler, or a medium leech.
At around five we decided to load up and go grab some supper and work our way to the pond to try and round up some walleyes. Another mutual friend Danny met us at the landing and we motored out to the north end to try our hand at trolling cranks on some weed/sand and weed/rock transition areas. Now I’ve never trolled or long lined cranks before but let me tell you I am hooked. We proceeded to long line shad raps from 9 to 13 feet and about 8:30 someone up above threw on the switch. In an hour and a half we had a couple smallies, our 12 eaters, two throw backs and a three pound pike. Best colors by far were more natural perch and emerald shiner colors. Chartruese only accounted for one fish and the blue shad had one also before they were being switched out.
Saturday a.m. Danny and I went to check out one of our smallie spots on the south end only to find high weedgrowth and empty beds. There probably were fish around but we decided to quick load up and run back north. On the way we had to swing in and fish some shallow gravel pitching 4″ natural colored swimbaits and picked up a couple nice 17 to 18″ prespawn smallies. We then started cranking and found fish in 10fow at high noon. By 1:30 we had caught 11 and decided to head back to the cabin for lunch and a little nap. Sat night we once again cranked but didnt due as good with only six fish being caught. I think due to the lack of wind in the afternoon the fish didnt move in quit as early as they did the day before, because all six fish where caught in the last half hour. Interesting thing was that by far the best crank baits were natural perch or crawfish shad raps with dark orange bellies.
Sunday I had to come home and work and I worked again today so my memorial weekend wasnt quite as long as some had, but i hope everyone enjoyed the weather, spent some time with family and friends and took a moment to reflect on all the sacrifices that so many have made just so we could be on the lakes this weekend enjoying the beautiful weather….
Goodluck to all in the MTT next weekend
Charles Schmidtbauer
Those gills are awesome and kudos to you for putting the majority back! 
anybody whoever said there are no slot fish in Mille Lacs to catch… now is your chance 
