Mille Lacs Bassmaster AOY Updates

BigWerm wrote:

LOL! I guess I’ll just reiterate I have nothing against B.A.S.S., the AOY event on Mille Lacs, Smallmouth, Largemouth, Muskies, or any other thing you misinterpreted from my previous posts. I do have a problem with the management of one of my favorite lakes, and the Capital Lake of our State Fish. One of the two groups responsible for the mismanagement is the tribe, and if we were serious about bringing attention to that fact, this event would have been a great opportunity. But as I pointed out in the post you quoted, I didn’t think anything would be put together to do so, and nothing was. Just as nothing was posted by me bashing this event, so imo it’s not flipping sides to follow it now. Nor to stop caring about B.A.S.S. events after this weekend.

I agree it’s a great event for the entire Mille Lacs area, will be for a long time going forward and I am looking forward to the rest of the weekend. None of that has anything to do with the serious mismanagement of the lake in my humble opinion, and if you’d like to discuss further start another thread.

Fortunately we on this site are all FAR too civilized to even attempt the things that BLM does. Credit to all of us, we are the hope for our formerly civilized world.

Back to BASS. Great stuff on LIVE with the Leprechaun bit, “YE took me gold and me beer aye gonna hit ye upside ye mullet! hilarious!

Let me help get us back on on track… Awesome pic from day 1 of Seth bear hugging a smallie.

I’ve always found it interesting that they don’t allow nets un the Elite Series.

Will

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Will Roseberg wrote:

I’ve always found it interesting that they don’t allow nets un the Elite Series.

I was wondering about that. Pretty impressive start for most of these guys again!!

Did anybody see this picture from this morning?

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I sure hope that pic is prescient of things to come…

Interesting Seth doesn’t have an alternative long shaft motor for fishing Mille Lacs. His motor is spitting white a bit and it isn’t very rough today, yet. I went to a 60″ on my Ranger 518 just for Mille Lacs. It never leaves the water anymore.

Actually Seth changed out this motor from the 40 somthing to the 50″ just for this tournament.

gizmoguy wrote:

Actually Seth changed out this motor from the 40 somthing to the 50″ just for this tournament.

Should of changed to 60″ the way it looks. Zona and the guys in the studio had me cracking up playing the leprechaun guy talking when they showed that rainbow pic of Feider. “YE stole me Busch Light!”

Good TV ha

For the average guy it is a hard decision to put a 60″ shaft on a bass boat. If you fish a fair amount shallow, it is probably not a good idea but I will not look back on my decision to go 60″.

In Seth’s case he may want to consider jumping up to 60″ vs 50″, it just never gets in the way on a lake like Mille Lacs. Especially considering the type of water he is fishing.

Will Roseberg wrote:

Let me help get us back on on track… Awesome pic from day 1 of Seth bear hugging a smallie.

I’ve always found it interesting that they don’t allow nets un the Elite Series.

Will

I love that pic. Looks like he is trying not to fumble a football! Not the way I was taught to land them though!! Looks like they may get wet for awhile.

Feider just culled a 3.5 for a 5…awesome. Love it.

A little complicated, but I like the perspective offered by this cut and paste from the bassmaster blog:

I am not good at math, but let’s look at putting this derby into mathematical perspective.

A 10-pound largemouth is equal, by definition of a trophy bass, to a 6-pound smallmouth. The brown fish simply don’t grow as big as the green ones. So, a 50-pound limit of largemouth is equal to a 30-pound limit of smallies. This is a 5:3 ratio (or 1.66).So looking at yesterday … those 20-pound smallmouth limits were equal to 33.2 pounds of largemouth. A 26-7 limit, like Takahiro caught yesterday, would equal 48.82 pounds! If this formula was being used by the tournament officials, this derby would be rewriting the record books.

It looks like hey aren’t catching them quite as well as yesterday, but Matt Herren has reported 28 bass with a total weight of just over 100# today so far! Yikes!!

Is Fender the guy that went to the U of M?

I think it’s great the lake has possitive publicity for a change. Hopefully the local boy can pull it out. Maybe we will see mullet hair “feider” hats in stores lol

belletaine wrote:

Is Fender the guy that went to the U of M?

Fender is a guitar.

Trevor Lo and Austin Felix both fished at the U.

I been following mille lacs all year on the forums and its great to see some positives.. Are some of the resort getting good business or is it all isolated to the casino? Eddies is also the tribes? Any way watched the way in today and will be following it all weekend. very exciting being its here in Minnesota and Seth has a great chance of winning it

c_w wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>belletaine wrote:</div>
Is Fender the guy that went to the U of M?

Fender is a guitar.

Trevor Lo and Austin Felix both fished at the U.

auto correct! Thank you c_w )

MN and Mille Lacs tourism need to get a copy of KVD’s Day 2 weigh in and make a commercial out of it, it was fantastic
.

congratulations to the Minnesota kid Seth

Wow. Pretty amazing at the numbers and size of smallies that were caught. The winner had 15 fish that averaged over 5 pounds. Even a guy that placed in the middle of the field averaged nearly 4 pounds per smallie. And lots and lots of big fished that were culled.

I’m curious if these professionals use a network of people that help them find the fish such as local guys that know the lake well, guides, etc. or if they find the fish simply by studying the lake and using their knowledge of bass behavior to do so well. Do they have other guys in the tournament that they partner with to share knowledge, hot locations, techniques, etc.? Do they have friends that help them pre-fish? I don’t know what the rules are or if there are even any rules with respect to this subject. Not taking anything away from anyone, just wondering how the professionals go about prepping for the tournament. Maybe the timing was just perfect and the bite was super hot… they did have a full moon phase which some people believe helps the bite.

Boone

I’d like to reiterate that these guys know how to run an event.

Surprised that there weren’t more personal pics here.

Sunday morning I took the boat from Wahkon bay to Eddy’s in the dark to watch the final takeoff. Camera phone pics aren’t the best from a moving boat in low light but it was fun to see.

Pulling up to Eddy’s.

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Another shot of the boat crowd.

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Did you guys hear that Lane’s outboard conked out and got brought into the weigh-in by some spectator? They got approval from the Officials, brought him and his fish into the weigh station, then the guy went back and towed his boat in. Super cool to do that for a guy. I’m sure most would do it too, but thought that was a nice story.
I wish the event would have been televised live, but I watched the weigh in from my phone. They absolutely KNOW how to put on an event.
They saved the AOY award to the very end, and built up the drama for the tourney title by having those guys weigh first.
If this wouldn’t have been on Mille Lacs, I wouldn’t have watched a second of it, but since it was, I watched hours of it on my phone or just following basstraxx.
I hope they come back in a couple years.

Did any of you watch the weigh-in live? I was watching it and I forget who it was but after he commented on how great the lake was and thanked his sponsors, he went on to thank the troops, etc and said “this is why we stand for the national anthem” followed by a lot of cheers.
Well, the next guy was Ish Monroe. He didn’t have much to say up there and had a visibly pissed off look on his face when he came up there. Granted, he didn’t fair too well in the tournament, but I have to wonder if he wasn’t pissed off at the comments made about standing for the anthem???
Anyone else see that?

boone wrote:

I’m curious if these professionals use a network of people that help them find the fish such as local guys that know the lake well, guides, etc. or if they find the fish simply by studying the lake and using their knowledge of bass behavior to do so well. Do they have other guys in the tournament that they partner with to share knowledge, hot locations, techniques, etc.? Do they have friends that help them pre-fish? I don’t know what the rules are or if there are even any rules with respect to this subject. Not taking anything away from anyone, just wondering how the professionals go about prepping for the tournament. Maybe the timing was just perfect and the bite was super hot… they did have a full moon phase which some people believe helps the bite.

I’ll take a shot at this but I am no expert. I am just going off of what I have heard, learned on my own, and what I have chatted about with other anglers.

1) Feider is a Diawa pro, and so is…you guessed it, the 2nd place finsher Brent Ehrler. I am sure they talked as Ehrler fished almost the exact way Feider was fishing.
2) Yes they have practice days but just as you and I do, we chat with our fishing “buddies” to see whats been working and how the bite has been. The difference is that the pros have many more fishing “buddies” than we have ha.
3) Do people directly prefish for them? I am not sure that is legal but I am sure they do talk to guides and locals who have been on the lake.
4) I would say the bite was pretty rough tbh. Talking to some locals who fished saturday and they said it was tough. There are some days that a blind squirrel could catch 25lbs of smallies out of Mille Lacs. I would know, I have done it lol, and would consider myself a blind squirrel on Mille lacs.
5) Also, these anglers are the best at what they do, but many of them don’t fish smallies like they had to on Mille Lacs. Some struggled, but many did well and figured it out. I would say that their knowledge of fish behavior in general is used every time they break down a lake.

I am not a bass guy, I do target them some on Mille lacs once in a while and they are fun, but I prefer walleyes. That being said I never thought I would follow this tournament, maybe check in once in a while. I was absolutely glued to the live feed and weigh ins every single minutes of it. Extremely fun to watch. Really found myself routing for Feider. What a great event.

I am curious about how this will affect the traffic on Mille Lacs. I certainly hope it has a positive affect. Kind of sad being out there every weekend and for a lot of it having any spot I want to myself. It’s an awesome fishery for sure!!

To put in perspective, in one of the trending links on the BASS website, KVD talks about the best day of competitive fishing he ever had. It was at one of the tournaments he won this year. He did his personal best of 69.11 lbs. – the biggest 5-fish 3-day catch ever. I copied that directly out of the article. And that was largemouth. Seth and the second place angler beat that with 76.7 and 70.2 lbs., all in smallmouth.
I was up there fishing this weekend and caught 3 over 20” myself and lost a PB toad at boatside I hooked in the first 30 seconds of fishing. I concider myself just a walleye hack. I think I’m going back.

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boone wrote:

I’m curious if these professionals use a network of people that help them find the fish such as local guys that know the lake well, guides, etc.
Boone

The Pro anglers I know use every resource they can get… friends, friends of friends, guides and other Pro anglers. Many will also work as a group of 2 or 3. A team will be stronger than an individual. They share spots and paychecks. When one of them cashes a big paycheck they all get paid. This keeps a more steady paycheck coming in.

boone wrote:

I’m curious if these professionals use a network of people that help them find the fish such as local guys that know the lake well, guides, etc. or if they find the fish simply by studying the lake and using their knowledge of <em class=”ido-tag-em”>bass behavior to do so well. Do they have other guys in the tournament that they partner with to share knowledge, hot locations, techniques, etc.? Do they have friends that help them pre-fish? I don’t know what the rules are or if there are even any rules with respect to this subject. Not taking anything away from anyone, just wondering how the professionals go about prepping for the tournament. Maybe the timing was just perfect and the bite was super hot… they did have a full moon phase which some people believe helps the bite.

Boone

I think they mostly read internet forums

Honestly they have a rather large network of friends and usually have no problem getting a lot of information prior to the event and then they get out and put in the time to validate the information that they’ve been given.

Will