Jolly Roger Tackle Mille Lacs Report – July 9-10

This weekend we fished in the Red Door Resort Tournament on Mille Lacs. I’m happy to say that Jolly Roger Spinners produced a ton of fish, but unfortunately for us, they did not pull in enough 14-18 inchers! We had two great days of catching fish in every inch class except those coveted Mille Lacs slotters.

Saturday greeted the lake with rain, storms and a strong south wind that made any plans to go far south on the back burner. We worked 7 different flats in different regions (North, West and Mid Lake) pulling crawler harnesses the entire time and probably handled over 30 fish, but caught only 2 slots.

On Sunday, we gave the Optimax quite a workout by starting the morning with a 13 mile run south to try gravel. We cruised around severals spots looking for fish and the cupboard was bare on most. We did find a few fish on a couple spots, fished them for awhile and only caught overs. With the action slow on the gravel, we decided to head back to the mud flats. On the first mud spot we tried, the 1st fish we caught was just over 18". Then we got into a pod of 13 inchers so I thought it was just a matter of time before we’d find their tournament legal cousins but it didn’t happen. We caught lots of just over 18 to 19.5 inchers on most spots. Spinners and crawlers were working great, but we just couldn’t find the right fish. I talked to a few guys that fared pretty well on slot fish and most were doing the same thing. It’s just a matter of getting on the right pods at the right time. Some teams also had success pulling cranks on leadcore. I was trying to locate results to post with the report but haven’t been able to locate any online.

Next week I’m taking a few days off and heading up to Winnibigosh. It’s been a couple years since I’ve been up there in mid-summer and I can’t wait to get out on the vast mid-lake structure Winnie has to offer.