Mille lacs pike fishing

Anyone catching pike on the south end of mille lacs? I can’t seem to find them!

I am also curious. If no one replies, I guess I’ll just go find out for myself in a week or two and report back.

Go deep. You need to find cool water.

Thanks,I will give it a try

There used to be some huge ones in there; has that changed since they started allowing spearing?

shady5 wrote:

There used to be some huge ones in there; has that changed since they started allowing spearing?

Perhaps some. But the most recent pike population study completed May 1, 2019 indicates that 26% of the pike in the lake are over 30 inches and 3.6% are over 40 inches.

One quarter of the pike population in any lake being over 30 inches is still pretty dang good in my opinion considering how many of our lakes are almost completely over run with 20 inch snakes.

Caught 2 while fishing Thursday in Vineland bay. Didn’t measure but they were around 30”. 12-13 feet of water.

I’ve been try for pike on the mud flats using a lindy rig on artificial gulp leeches but I can’t keep the darn eyes of the hook!

^^^ naughty boy ^^^

My friend got a 42” Muskie last week while trolling a Taildancer on leadcore at 2 mph in the basin. Might want to give that a try. Hopefully the Walleyes leave it alone.

Pike are few and far between, 20 years ago I could troll a standard daredevil around and catch 2-3 per hr in Cove Bay. Now its hard to find any pike fishing an entire day. Maybe I have lost my touch…

Has the spear houses had any effect on the population?

Besox wrote:

Has the spear houses had any effect on the population?

I would have to say yes, unless of course none of those spear fisherman actually speared a fish…….

There are pike to be caught out there. In my opinion it’s trophy fishery. You likely wont catch large numbers of fish anytime but the chance for a very large fish is very possible.

Going to try trolling the basin tomorrow, we will see how that goes!