Jolly Roger Tackle Mille Lacs Report July 2-3

Well, it seems summer has finally set in! It was a beautiful weekend on Mille Lacs with temps in the low 80’s, sunny skies and light winds. We had some nasty weather fronts moving in on Friday, so we elected to head up to the big pond Saturday morning. We fished through Sunday afternoon as we had to get back to fill orders and to spend the 4th with family.

On Saturday, we hit several mudflats pulling Jolly Roger Harnesses with air injected crawlers and had great success on big fish. We had steady action all day as most were in that 20”-23” range. We also caught a few in the 24”-26” range, and one big 28” bruiser caught by my Dad, Chris that fell victim to a Pro Series Goby. Most fish were caught on the flat’s deeper side in the 27-30 foot depth ranges. We even slid out and got a few on the flat bottoms in 34-36 feet of water. Although this was a ton of fun, we were trying to locate slot fish spots in preparation for next weekend’s Red Door Resort Tournament. We must have hit 7-8 different flats and only managed 2 slot fish for the day. Last year, I had no problem getting good slotters on a few key mud spots, but they don’t seem to be there this year.

On Sunday, we decided to see if we could replicate our slot fish success from 2 weeks ago (last time out) on southern gravel areas…again deploying Jolly Roger spinners. Within the first 20 minutes, we caught 4 fish with 2 being the 17 inchers we were looking for. I thought we were onto something, but after about 3 more hours, we only caught a few more overs, so back to the mud we went. We tried some different mud spots from Saturday and again had great action on big fish but no slots.

I’m not sure what my game plan will be for the Tournament next weekend. We won’t have time to pre-fish this week and I think there are still alot of slotters on the gravel. It’s a long haul from the Red Door Resort to the gravel depending on weather conditions, so I think I’ll probably roll the dice and make the final decision Saturday morning! If it’s windy, I think we’ll try to grind it out on the mud. I like the new Red Door Tournament format. It’s basically two 1 day tournaments (started last year) with payouts given on each day. We got 7th last year on Day 1 to cash a check and just missed the money on Day 2. Hope to see a good turnout this year! It’s a great tournament and the Red Door Resort Staff does a top notch job putting it on.

Best of Fishing,

Shawn Flemming

Jolly Roger Tackle