Open water question.

I know a lot of the Walleye guys catch big Pike while Walleye fishing. Are there many guys who troll the big open water and flats on Mille Lacs targeting Pike? If so would you target the top 1/3rd of the water column? Would you run spoons or large cranks? I’m thinking early, late & mid summer, not the early winter when the Muskie guys are flying around.

Thoughts?

Used to catch a few when downrigging stickbaits for eyes.One here one there sort of thing,never any real big ones.Got them on the gravel,flats and pretty much anywhere out in no mans land.

Dutchboy wrote:

I know a lot of the Walleye guys catch big Pike while <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>Walleye fishing. Are there many guys who troll the big open water and flats on Mille Lacs targeting Pike? If so would you target the top 1/3rd of the water column? Would you run spoons or large cranks? I’m thinking early, late & mid summer, not the early winter when the Muskie guys are flying around.

Thoughts?

Thoughts I’ll come back to later. Observations, my own experience and witnessing?

Biggest Mille Lacs pike come through the ice whether targeted specifically or “walleye guys that catch big pike while walleye fishing” ice fishing.

Sure some nice pike are boated open water, however the ratio of big pike out there ice/open water is clearly much better odds through the ice.

Big pike like muskie are rare out on the flats. Could be there, but like a needle in a haystack. More likely to find them closer to inshore structure.

Trolling spoons or medium crankbaits is good for medium pike, magnum size crankbaits for big muskies on predictable structure.

My thoughts are that far more big pike come out of that lake through the ice, why? I have no idea.

Hope that doesn’t talk you out of trying open water.

I think you hear about them more in the winter because resorts share more in the winter imo. I think the public accesses get more pressure in the summer and therefore the numbers of tanks are not heard of as much.

As for targeting the big ones, I’ve heard good things in the shallower areas with smaller Muskie equipment. I have never heard of any true patterns out deep for pike.

Thanks all.

Andy, nothing stops me from trying in open water. Those big Pike are in the lake both summer and winter but I need to find out why the bigger ones come out in the winter. Charlie has what sounds like a legit observation.

In my experience thus far it seems the medium to smaller Pike relate more towards the bays and weed / rock structure. In the fall the bigger ones come back to the bays (think Vineland) it seems. I need to figure out where in the main basin the tanks hang out in the summer.Maybe I just need to drag a 20″ Walleye around.

Muskies also confuse me in the same way.

I suppose it’s possible there just aren’t that many big fish in the lake and they are concentrated in the bays. About the time I convince myself there aren’t many big fish left some ice guy drags one up. See why I’m confused?

Oh well, summer will be here soon enough and the search will start again. As they say it’s “about the hunt”.

One lake I fish has a lot of cribs in it and I have camera`d them I do not know how many BIG Pike, Muskies and Walleyes I have seen lying right beside the cribs as Panfish and Crappies are swimming all around them ( have tried to tempt them into biting even bumping them with different lures ). I believe there feeding window is very short just have to be in the right place at the right time.

A lot of guys troll the mud and the basins for muskie, and occasionally run into a pike. If I were after them in the summer, I’d troll shoreline structure and weed beds. Fisher’s Resort posts quite a bit on FB about guys chasing pike and would be a good resource.

According to the most recent data on pike population estimates in Mille Lacs, approximately 35% of the pike in this lake are over 30 inches in length. That’s quite the contrary to most other smaller systems that seem to be completely over run with snakes. I occasionally run into a solid fish targeting muskies. They are more weed oriented than muskies though it seems.

you will catch a few in the basin areas but hard to target. better off trolling along the weed beds in the bays. Friend used to do very well trolling long the cabbage for large pike.

I would keep temperature in mind while searching for these fish, especially the big ones. They are supposedly very temperature selective. I am not in any way an expert on this, but I like the study of big toothy critters.

In the summer time, I would be trying to understand temp profiles in deeper water of the basin or flats… I am not sure how I would do this, but given the money a temp probe on a downrigger might be the way to go. Then if finding water temps below 70 would be key for me to stick around, assuming that a spring or springs are keeping temps cooler.

In the spring, I’d be doing the same on the weedlines, Vineland, Isle, Wahkon and/or Cove Bays or even the north shoreline. And it seems like the fall time has the fish coming back to shoreline points, according to old In-Fisherman stuff I remember seeing.

Mark

Here are my thoughts for what they are worth. More big pike are caught ice fishing because the big fish are more concentrated outside the bays moving up to get ready to spawn. I have absolutely no evidence but my guess is more big pike are caught towards the end of the ice season than at any other time. Spring though in my opinion is big pike time, get out there on opening day and fish the bays, the later the ice out the better. If the water hasn’t warmed up to much the big girls will still be shallow. If targeting in late spring early summer I would concentrate on deep weed edges that have some rocks. Once the water warms up my thought is the big pike scatter into the big lake and good luck finding them although you will still hear of people catching them occasionally. I tried trolling the basin with muskie lures and gave it the whole day and only caught large walleyes and not that many. Good luck!

In addition keep in mind the thermocline and dissolved oxygen concentrations. Fish go where the conditions are right – temperature, exygen levels, prey availability and ambush locations. Mille Lacs typically does not stratify lime many Minnesota lakes. On many lakes dissolved oxygen is too low below the thermocline to support fist. A couple of lakes I fish are absolutely vacant below 12-14 feet during late summer because oxygen levels are so low.