Mille Lacs Late July Open Water Trolling Report

The open water trolling bite on Mille Lacs continues to produce many big walleyes and it’s also building friendships along the way. I dedicated this past weekend to help others learn the open water trolling system on Mille Lacs and opened up my boat to the readers of my reports. Joining me on Friday afternoon was Dave Akin, his brother Jim and his son “JJ”. Dave fishes Mille Lacs occasionally and he also has a cabin nearby on Clear Lake. All were pretty new to open water trolling and were eager to learn.

We motored out to a spot where I had caught some fish on my previous outing. It didn’t take us too long to see that the tullibees and walleyes were still there as my graph lit up with baitfish and red arcs. I took a couple of minutes and talked about what we would be using throughout the day – crankbaits, trolling rods, line counter reels and rod holders. I then put out a deep tail dancer, showed them how to properly tune it, attached a planer board and put it in the water. The planer board drifted back about 50 feet and I was talking about how the planer board would angle out at 45 degree angle. When I stopped the board, a fish hit the crankbait below (unbeknown to anyone else). I casually said “OK, now it’s time to real in your fish Jim.” He gave me a puzzled look and said “what do you mean?” I repeated myself “Now would be a good time for you to reel your fish in!” He finally took me serious and a minute later Jim was holding his first open basin walleye! Needless to say, our day got off to a great start.

The sign wasn’t the greatest in this spot but it was enough to keep us trolling. We worked this area over and over and we ended the day catching 13 walleyes and had a few others that got off. These fish were not real aggressive and many of them were barely hooked in the lip and got off as soon as they landed in the net. It may be because the heat stress is starting to take a toll on the tullibees and the walleyes are having some easy pickings. We saw a few floaters over the weekend as well.

Joining me on Sat was Jim Norell, his brother Gregg Norell and Dion Brandt (huskerdu). Due to some storms in the morning we got off to a late start – about 11am. The wind was coming out of the west which was not good for this area because my troll run the day before was in a north/south direction. I always troll with the waves to ensure that my planer boards and lines are not thrashing back and forth when the waves hit my boat. This ensures that my crankbaits are swimming as true as possible. Whenever the wind changes direction from the day before, I plan accordingly and understand that I will have to do a series of perpendicular troll runs through my previous day’s trail runs.

We picked up a couple of fish with our first troll run and had another get off. As the lake started to calm down, our fishing picked up and we started to develop a pattern. Deep Tail Dancers and Deep Thundersticks trolled deep in the water column. As we started to get them dialed in, the skies to the west grew darker and darker around 5pm. After checking out the radar on Jim’s cell phone, it was an easy decision for us to get off the lake and call it a day. We ended the shortened day due to thunderstorms with 13 walleyes. A decent showing in challenging weather.

Joining me on Sunday was Kevin Hines (IDO lurker for years), Bob Olson (SmokinBobO) and Alan “Oly” Olson (olysflyrod). The storms from the night before had me a little worried and from my experience fishing the next day can be challenging. It always seems that the baitfish kind of scatter and don’t school up as much as the day before the thunderstorms. The good news was it was a beautiful day with light winds and that meant we would be able to troll in any direction. The day started off real slow – or should I say it was down right dead and we only caught one walleye in a couple of hours trolling in the same exact area as the previous day. We decided to do some scouting and eventually headed down to the gravel area and where we finally marked a ton of bait. However the arcs on the graph were few and we trolled that area for a while but had no takers.

Learning my lesson from a week ago, I decided we should go back to the same area where I had caught fish on Fri and Sat and try it again. Experience has taught me that sooner or later those fish will turn on and eat. However after another hour of trolling, we still had not caught our second walleye of the day and it was going on five hours! We stuck to the gameplan because I was still marking baitfish and walleyes. Finally we got a planer board strike on a TDD11 purple clown flash deep tail dancer and wouldn’t you know it – the leadcore line took off screaming as well. We fished for 5 hours and got one fish – and now we got we got two walleyes on at the same time. Things can sure change fast. Our first double was a good one as one walleye taped out at 27.75” and ended up being Bob’s PB. Twenty minutes later we got our second double of the day and it was easy to see that we were getting it dialed in. Most of these fish were caught in a small quarter of a mile area and each time my figure 8 troll run got tighter and tighter. It got to a point where we could predict a hit seconds before it happened. In fact, one time I was counting how many waypoints were in this area and as I hit number 10, the leadcore line counter reel went off screaming again and I changed it to 11! To make a long story short – we ended up the day catching 22 walleyes and all of our patience and persistency had finally paid off.

As the sun went down on Sunday night, I finally got a chance to relax and let things unfold. It was absolutely beautiful out and there was not a single boat around us for miles. I smiled as I watched Bob, Kevin and Oly implement the things they had learned throughout the day. There they were communicating with one another and working as a team putting in fish after fish into the boat. I was proud of them for not only doing all the little things that lead to success, but what really made me feel good was that it was easy to see they had caught the fever and thrill of open water trolling!

The keys to our success were fishing in areas where Mille Lacs was at its deepest depths. I believe the tullibees were seeking cooler temperatures in those areas and of course the walleyes were close behind. We were also targeting depths just a few feet off the bottom and it was important to move those crankbaits up and down as the depth made subtle changes. Another important factor was experimenting with our crankbaits as we tipped them with some gulp crawlers. (thanks to Oly for asking if I ever used scents on my crankbaits). We simply cut the gulp crawler in half and hooked it on the front treble hook. Did the scented gulp crawler truly make a difference? It certainly did on this night and it will be interesting to test this little trick on future trips.

What a great weekend of fishing! The fish were plentiful and big as 4 anglers had caught their personal best. However, what really made it great was that I got to meet so many passionate fishermen and now I have a bunch of new friends. Everyone was so eager to learn the open water trolling system and it was easy to see that each and every one of them had the same passion as me when it comes to walleye fishing. I’ve never been asked so many good questions and it actually got me thinking of why and how I do things out there. Who would ever think that a little fish called the walleye would build so many friends in one weekend.

It’s only August and that means there’s plenty of time to get out there and experience the thrill of open water trolling. As always, I’m here to help so keep those emails and PMs coming.

Until next time… keep on trollin’!