How's the fishing?

I know it’s a super vague and almost personal question to some but how’s the fishing on Mille Lacs?

The reason I ask is because I like to go different places ice fishing just for something new and kind of a challenge. I’m from Eastern ND and fish mainly Devils Lake and occasionally LOW. I’ve never fished Mille Lacs but I’ve heard about the struggles of fish population. Then I’ve also heard they’re catching some big fish but no keeping. I’d be hole hopping with a snowmobile pulling an Otter. I’m kind of an in-between hole hopper vs sit in one place all day. Make sense?

I’m not concerned with keeping fish to eat where ever I go. I just want to catch some quality size fish and if I’m lucky good numbers too. I don’t know anyone that fishes down there to ask them. Up hear I mostly hear of the horror story of all of the fish disappearing.

I’m sure you get my point by now. So for my MN ice fishing this year should I turn North on I-29 to LOW or South to Mille Lacs?

p.s. I’m targeting Walleye.

There is no shortage of walleyes on Mille Lacs. Matter of fact, a lot of people are concerned there’s too many (mostly large fish) in the lake right now. If you know what your doing, and it sounds like you do, you will do just fine. Especially if you go early in the year. First couple weeks you can get out to structure is best. Structure = mud flats, gravel bars, rocky reefs etc. I only half a$$ know what I’m doing, and if I can catch fish, anybody can! Lol.

Nothing wrong with mille lacs, but from where you are, there are a ton of better lakes a lot closer, I would definitely pick low first.

Having lived in Eastern ND for a decade…

….go to Mille Lacs.

You’d catch more fish on LOTW but you’re going to have more fun going somewhere new and challenging yourself.

I’m predicting ice fishing this year to be unreal. Catch rates were up significantly from August going into November due to a decline in forage. Fishing is going to be really good.

There are places you’ll ice more fish but there’s no lake right now where you’re going to ice more 20″+ fish than Mille Lacs.

Good luck, have fun, and be safe! Just like LOTW there are a lot of pressure ridges and open water breaks to keep an eye out for.

I reccomend this video for anyone new to the lake. It gives you a good general idea of the geography and terms guys use.

Watch “The Amazing Mille Lacs – Lindner’s Fishing Edge 2013 S6” on YouTube

The thing about ML compared to LOTW is in addition to LOTW having more walleyes (18 compared to 16 in most recent fisheries survey roughly) that you have a crap ton of saugers and a very respectable amount of jumbo perch. LOTW is where I’d go if I was targeting perch, alm due respect given to DL and other great perch bodies of water on the drift prairie and coteau in ND.

So where on LOTW you can expect a lot “off-fish” walleye action from the abundant other species…hell, even burbot…on ML you’re solely getting walleyes. The occasional odd jumbo perch is kind of a rarity.

In that regard fishing might seem very slow when compared to LOTW. If you ice double digits on ML in a day consider that a pretty damn good day.

I think with the lack of forage we’ll see twenty fish days be fairly common for the guys that are willing to fish hard and move around all day. That wasn’t an extreme anomaly last year, but I’d say it was fairly uncommon. You’d mark tons of fish including lots of perch last year, but getting them to bite wasn’t always easy.

For a guy like yourself consider it a challenge and also consider it this:

Whale Hunting

No lake you’re going to fish is going to produce the amount of 20″ plus fish with better odds of a fish coming through the hole being in it’s upper-twenties than Mille Lacs. Honestly, if you fish hard for a three day weekend you should definitely expect to ice a 25″ plus fish, with the chances of a 26″ 27″ 28″ or over being again, better at Mille Lacs than anywhere else.

If you want to catch a lot of small to medium sized ‘eyes?

Go to URL or LOTW.

I’ve had a lot of great trips to LOTW…fished out of the angle, camping on the Ontario side, Warroad, Baudette, big pike ice fishing the Manitoba portion, etc., etc.

My memorable trips to LOTW have been open water fishing (soft ice versus the gay term “hard water?”). Ice fishing LOTW has usually involved lowering the bar to cleaning anything 14″ or over, which honestly is kind of my preference, but by choice after throwing the “spawners” back. One year we were fileting anything over the foot mark….yup, 12″ fish. We got that desperate. Don’t get me wrong it was fun….for a day….and we caught a crap-ton, but it got boring real quick and it’s kind of sad feeling a 14″ is picture worthy.

I’d rather be whale hunting on ML where it’s standard to hook into a fish and have to struggle fighting them up the water column and freak out a bit once they’re at the hole. It might only happen a half dozen to a dozen times in a day, but it gets my heart pumping a hell of a lot more than reeling in triple digits of little walleye, sauger, and perch.

If I want to reel in little fish after fish one after the other I go to a nearby lake from ML and go crappie fishing. Feels about the same to me as ice fishing LOTW. It usually even involves the occasional snot-rocket pike making me want to believe I’ve hooked into a big walleye for all of the two seconds I tried to concvince myself of that.

It’s all about perspective and expectations—Mille Lacs is where the big boys go whale hunting.

We fished it last winter and it wasn’t a very good bite. Marked lots, couldn’t get many to bite. Heard many reports of the same. I heard there was a good Perch hatch, so the walleye had lot of little Perch to eat. Two years ago, I heard many reports of great fishing. The night bite was reported to be better than to day bite, which is totally different than LOW.

arcticm1000 wrote:

We fished it last winter and it wasn’t a very good bite. Marked lots, couldn’t get many to bite. Heard many reports of the same. I heard there was a good Perch hatch, so the <em class=”ido-tag-em”>walleye had lot of little Perch to eat. Two years ago, I heard many reports of great fishing. The night bite was reported to be better than to day bite, which is totally different than LOW.

This mirrored my experience. The perch were a huge problem for anglers. Nearly every hole under 18′ of water was full of perch, and we can’t be expected to compete with schools of 2″ perch. The winter before made everyone look like a hero and really raised expectations.