I dont fish mille lacs much and when I do I usually don’t do too well. Today was maybe the 6th or 7th time I’ve fished it. We had a blast and had what I would consider success! We were targeting walleye but I’m a fan of smallmouth too and that proved to be what was biting today. In total we boated around 20 fish and probably lost that many more including a nice sized pike that bit my friend off at the boat. I caught a 19″ & 20″ smallie. Just footballs.
Water temp was 59 degrees. I launched out of the garrison public launch. We fished reefs and the flats. All our fish came off of several reefs. Didn’t mark anything on the flats we fished. Jig and sucker minnow fished vertical proved to be the ticket today. We spend a fair amount of time dragging spinners but didn’t catch any fish this way. The morning started out cold – around 38 degrees with a steady chop. As the day went on it slowly warmed up and the wind died down. We caught fish all throughout the day.
Princes bait had a nice selection of minnows and the gentlemen who helped me was very nice and gave me a good tip. Shout out to bigwerm for some tips too.
Was nice to have some success on mille lacs. I’ll be fishing it more