I was lucky enough to spend 4 full days fishing on Mille Lacs this past week. The weather was a little different each day, but the fish didn’t seem to care.
We started most mornings pulling cranks on a reef in 6′ to 16′ of water. Cranks of choice were #5 shad raps and #10 deep husky jerks. Both caught fish.
After making 2-3 passes with the cranks, we’d head out to the mud and pull spinners on the breaks of the flats. For us, the deep edge of the break was the most consistent. A hammered gold spinner was the clear preference and bead color did not appear to matter at all. We had bead combinations that included gold, silver, green, purple, and red.
On Wednesday, a buddy brought his two boys up and we put 52 in the boat. The wind was manageable and allowed us to pick a long flat, plot a route, toss in a bag and fine tune with the trolling motor. Both boys ended up catching their largest walleye, 26″ and 26.25″. Their dad wound up catching a 26.5″ later in the week so he still has bragging rights! What a fun day for two young boys, I think they may be hooked!
On Thursday, I had the privilege of welcoming Hilltopper into my boat for a wonderful day of fishing. The weather was perfect for pulling spinners, no bag was needed, just the trolling motor. We ended up catching 47 and the number of 24″+ fish was unbelievable. At one point we were joking about this one just being another run of the mill 25 incher.
Friday the wind picked up and changed direction, which made it virtually impossible to fish the same flat that we had been on the previous 2 days. A couple buddies joined me, we managed to catch 36 on a different flat that was better situated for the wind. Which is a great day of fishing, just seemed a little lackluster after Wednesday and Thursday!
Saturday the wind was a little better, but it also was constantly changing from blowing pretty good to not much at all. Normally I wouldn’t really care but my trolling motor batteries were basically drained after only 3 hours, so we had to resort to free drifting and then course correcting with the kicker. We managed to scratch out 41, with several more over 24″. One of my buddies proceeded to hit three over 26″ in a really short time frame. He and I tied at 26.75″ for big fish of the trip.
Overall we caught 176 fish over the course of 4 days. At least 40 of them were over 24″, with 10 being 26″+. We caught fish from 12″-26.75″. Only a few were skinny, most of them were thick. I saw 3 floaters.
