What a great Father’s Day weekend to be on Mille Lacs. The weather was comfortable, there were no bugs and the fish were biting good! This weekend, we decided to work gravel and see if we could locate some slot fish for the frying pan after experiencing a low slot to fish caught ratio on mud flats the previous week. We were really busy filling orders on Friday, so we left Saturday morning and got on the water at about 10 AM.
Working various gravel bars from the 5 Mile Gravel area down towards Sloppy Joes, we ended up with 7 nice slot fish and many overs up to 26” on Saturday. Several bars were quite crowded with boats hovering over the tops in the 23-25 foot range, so we did a lot of driving around to locate fish on the outer depth rings. Once we found them, we’d setup for a trolling run by pulling spinners with both leeches and crawlers behind a 2 oz bottom bouncer all weekend.
The best colors were our Pro Series Sunrise Craw with a leech and Firebelly or Firetiger with a crawler, all in #3. These were the colors we started with and they were producing so well, we didn’t try much else. It was basically a tie between leeches and crawlers. When fishing gravel, we lower the bouncer to the bottom, and then reel up 2 cranks to keep the weight off the bottom a bit to avoid snags while trolling at 1.0-1.3 MPH.
On Sunday, we put in a half day and worked a few really small humps on the South end. This was a ton of fun because we had them all to ourselves and the fish were loaded on some of them. Most of these humps were maybe an acre in size so we would basically just backtroll the spinners around them in a figure eight as some fish were on top and some on the sides. On one spot, we must have picked up close to a dozen eyes in 1 hour. Again, we experienced a good mix of slot fish and overs.
Next weekend is my daughter’s 4th birthday party, so I won’t be hitting the water again until the 4th of July weekend and will post another report when I return. Good luck to all going out this week and weekend.
Best of Fishing,
Shawn Flemming
Jolly Roger Tackle
nice report!
Nice fish
Shawn,
Great report and I want to comment on the blades you have… They Look Awesome !!!
Last year I started trying to pull spinner blades down here on the river(pool 10). I have had some luck, but just didn’t get it dialed in before the weeds(razor grass) started coming down in force, fowling up the blades to often to make it fun anymore..
My question to you is this….
What size blades to you recommend on the river..
What length do you think is a good starting place for the Snell.
what speeds would you pull on the river system….
Look forward to your comments and will follow up with an order !!!
Hi Ecnook,
For rivers, I would start with brighter colors in a #4 such as Firetiger, Pink Scale, Emerald Scale or Purple Minnow. I would also trim the snell to 4′ and run it behind a 2 oz bouncer or 3 way weight and troll upstream from 1.0 – 1.5 MPH. If that doesn’t work, more natural patterns such as Sunrise Craw, Tennesse Shad or Rainbow Freeze might do the trick. I must admit my spinner time on the Mississippi is limited as most of my fishing is on large inland lakes, but this is a program I’ve deployed on the Missouri River system with good success. I do plan on getting out on the St Croix and Lake Pepin this year to do some experimenting. Thanks for your question and if you decide to place an order, please let me know how you do with them!
Thanks!
Shawn Flemming
Jolly Roger Tackle
Hey Shawn, nice report and very nice fish as well.
I read Ecnook’s post and your reply pretty closely. For many years I tried pulling crawler harnesses on Lake Wisconsin with varying degrees of moderate success. Never got it completely dialed in.
Then some time ago, I learned how to run slow death rigs. Since that time, crawler harnesses have gotten a lot less time in my boat. Kind of a shame because I still gotta believe that there is a time and place for it’s use here.
Question for you:
1) Why fluorocarbon line for spinner rigs instead of a high quality mono?
Beyond fluro’s basic qualities….abrasion resistance, light reflectivity, low stretch properties. The one property I’m most interested comparing between the two lines is this:
If flouro sinks and mono doesn’t, why fluoro over mono?
I realize once you put the hardware on a spinner rig, it’s probably going to sink anyway. For me, these questions are more about picking an expert’s brain and learning something new.
Here on Lake Wisconsin, if it sinks and drags on the bottom, it’s not going to remain on the end of you line for very long. Any recommendations for a stained water lake with lots of stumps laying on the bottom of the lake?
Nice report.
Hi Joel,
Great questions.
Last summer we did alot of R&D (most on Mille Lacs) with several different lines. We chose Flourocarbon for 2 main reasons:
1. It caught as many or more fish than mono.
2. It was much more durable and more resistant to twisting.
In my opinion, the invisibility factor of Flouro is a little overrated as I used to catch lots of fish with mono rigs too, but I’d often have to toss the rigs after a days use. We get 10X more mileage on a Flouro rig. The invisibility might make a difference though under some conditions.
I think the sinking characteristics of Flouro is pretty minor for a spinner rig as you’ll be trolling it from 1.0 MPH and up, so the blade will lift it once you’re moving. I almost always inject my crawlers with air which provides more lift too.
I grew up in ND and cut my teeth on Devils Lake and the Missouri River system where snags are present and we used bottom bouncers almost exclusively. I’ve never been to Lake WI, but it sounds like snags down there are more prevalent than what I’m used to.
I’ve never tried pulling inline weights/spinners on a river before, but perhaps it just might work. You’d have to experiment with weights, but a general rule of thumb is 2 feet of line per 1 foot of depth with a 2 oz inline at 1.2-1.3 MPH. For a 1 oz. weight, 3 feet of line for 1 foot of depth (experimentation is best however to dial it in). Pulling these upstream over the top of the “snaggy” structure just might do the trick.
Good luck! If you try that, I’d love to hear how it worked.
Hi Ecnook,
Thanks for your order. It will ship on Thursday and I look forward to hearing how you did.
Thanks!
Shawn
Thanks for the help and info Shawn,
I sent you an email with a couple more questions.. It was in a reply to my order conformation..
I look forward to using them and I will report back … no doubt !!
nice report, great job.
Thanks for the report Shawn and it’s great to see that your blades are catching a lot of walleyes in Mille Lacs. I may have to try some of those out in the open basin.
Thanks Brad…#5 blades in the same colors mentioned in the report should really pull in the big ones out on the open basin too.