Mille Lacs Opener Report

Well, another opener is in the books! A little colder than what I think we would like to consider normal and the wind and rain didn’t help! But in MN, you have to adapt to the hand you are dealt. Our plan was to hit some off shore rock piles Saturday and look for post spawn fish. Figuring we may still find males (And females) in the spawining areas as our mission was to find slots. To our surprise, we found some big females and males outside the slot willing to play. We slip bobber fished and rigged leeches, but our most successfull presentation was corking. Slow and steady was the key. They liked it better when the leeches were dangled about 2 feet off the bottom on Gammy #6 Walleye wide gap hooks. I had a blast using my light action 10’6" St. Croix buggy whip. We had 2 28" class fish hooked by the skin of the mouth, but the soft rod kept them on until Ben netted them. Ben was using a St. Coix 9’6" Medium Moderate Wild River with much success as well. We did not get a slot Saturday as our smallest fish was 21"…But we had a plan for the slots, and it included the cover of darkness! More on that later!

Our first rockpile of Saturday morning had us and a few others fishing in light rain and a north breeze. As sunrise came on…so did the wind! And it blew! Those of you who braved it know what it was like. The only bite we got was this tank smallie that couldn’t resist the dangling leech 2 feet over her head! A very healthy looking fish! A little background, Ben got his hand stuck in a door at work a few days earlier, and I have two broken ribs and a dislocated thumb…So pulling anchors was a nightmare of pain and agony for both of us. When we left this spot, our anchor locked into the rocks and we could not get it off right away. Ben got the rope wrapped around his bad hand and the shriek I heard had me thinking his hand got ripped off! We almost lost the windshield and the trolling motor! I had to stay on the gas and point the bot into the wind to correct, and Ben took the full force of two waves over the bow! We got the anchor loose and it had me thinking no slot fish were worth the danger of the situation, so we headed back into some in-shore spots we know of.

We headed into some shallow sand to try our luck at rigging leeches which really paid off for us last year. One thing we noticed straight away was the lack of baitfish. We went into the eastern shore and threw out the drift sock and with the kicker pulled back out into deeper water, zig-zagging along the break. We never got a sniff, so we headed for some rock piles with the corking rods…We did much better corking than we did rigging.

We figured we could get slots on Sunday where we could fish out of the wind and in and around a prominent food source. And boy am I happy we did! Slow trolling shallow was the key. Areas we fish had depths from 3 to 6 FOW. We ended up with 8 slot fish, four over 17.5" and 4 others others just under 17.5"! Along with the slots came about 2 dozen medium range and Super Tanker variety walleyes, our biggest being 26.5". Leeches were producing as well for the corkers in our group! One of our boats was netting a male slot walleye and netted another following it right into the net!! Ben and I had a riot fishing the opener again this year! We fished our plan for Saturday and Sunday and aside from slots not coming Saturday, we more than made up for it on Sunday making a few modifications to presentations and locations. So have a plan and have some fun!!!