This will be my last report to share for Pool 2 until later in September when the river calls me back for the fall bonanza! Mille Lacs lake will be my home from now until the end of July.
I spent a good portion of yesterday targeting backwater areas for walleye and crappies.
First off I will talk about the walleyes, most of the fish that I found were fairly tight to backwater shorelines that had a small amount of current flowing by. I started out pulling wally divers and rap cranks longlined and had one fish on after about an hour of scouting different areas. These areas were higher percentage areas and I felt the fish were nearby so, I re-rigged a couple rods and pulled 3-ways and floaters with both minnows and crawlers. Crawlers appeared to be the favorite for this area. First pass into the current produced a 24 inch walleye. Second pass produced two small fish in the 14-15 inch range. 3rd pass produced a 27 in walleye and the 4th pass produced a 20 in fish. The best depth I had going was 9-11 feet of water along this current swept shoreline. This stretch that produced all my fish was only about 30 yards long, but took about 20 minutes to make a pass due to the speed I was trolling with the kicker motor. I moved just fast enough to make forward movement. Keeping the bait right in their face was needed to entice these fish into biting. The first pass with the crankbaits may have been moving just a bit too quick to trigger these fish, but this bite is not far off as I would expect in the next week to week in a half will host the beginning of a decent crank bite.
After a couple hours, I picked up and traveled well into some more backwaters in search of a few crappies. After a bit of searching, I stumbled into a nice 13 inch crappie hugged real tight into some down timber. After catching this fish, I dropped the anchor real close and used a long 8 foot rod to dabble in and around the branches of this timber to minimize getting hung up and also help getting these crappies out of these branches once a fish hit. This particular spot gave up 5 nice crappies to a jig/minnow combination. After about an hour of chasing these crappies, I found a couple more little areas to hold a couple here and a couple there. After a fish was caught, it seemed to stir up the area and spook the fish a bit as it took several minutes until a fish would move back into the tree limbs.
