Labor Day Weekend Open Water Trolling – Mille Lacs

I was hoping that the open water trolling season on Mille Lacs would end on a positive note and it did just that! Joining me on Sat was our friends Will Roseberg (Malmo Mafioso), his girlfriend Kellie Moline, my wife’s friend Michelle Johnson and my wife Tina. Fishing 5 out of a boat can be a little stressful especially in rough conditions but that’s one of the many reasons why I purchased my Skeeter WX2100. The big 21 foot deep V boat handles the waves well and the cockpit area is huge which certainly helped us from tripping over ourselves on Sat.

The wind was strong – 20+ MPH which always makes things a little more challenging out there. When using planer boards, it’s extremely important to troll with the waves to ensure that your boards are not thrashing back and forth on top of the water. Having a long soft tip flexible rod also helps absorb the sudden surges as waves slap against your boat.

It was an interesting day out there trolling an hour at a time without a hit and then all of a sudden you have two fish on at once! That’s one of the things I love about open water trolling – it can happen so fast out there. At a moment’s notice you can get into a pod of fish and the action becomes fast and furious! At one time we had both of our outside planer boards go off with three other leadcore lines out including one on an inside board. Here’s where it takes a lot of teamwork and coordination to ensure you don’t tangle lines or lose fish. There are two things you can do with that inside board. One is to just get it out of the water as quickly as possible. The other option is to free spool that inside board and then pull the fish on the outside board in front of the inside board essentially trading places. The inside board now becomes the outside board. This time around we decided to release that inside board. Everyone worked as a team and we ended up catching both of those walleyes without tangling lines.

Due to the rough conditions, we called it quits at 4pm and ended up catching about a dozen walleyes along with a jumbo perch who decided to hit a 6 inch crankbait. Michelle also took home 4 for dinner that were under the 20 inch slot limit. I wished I could have seen her father’s face when she arrived back at her family’s cabin with an ice cream pail of fish! Everyone made the most out of the day had a great time even though it was not an ideal day to fish because of the strong winds. A special thank you goes out to Will and Kellie along with Will’s Step Father – Steve Pedersen for hosting us on Sat night. We had an awesome dinner consisting of beef tenderloin and some salmon fillets that Will caught recently in Lake Michigan. Everything was fantastic! Thank you all for a very memorable day!

Joining me on Labor Day were Todd Hansen (Todders), his brother Scott Hansen and my old friend Joe Cavanaugh. The wind had finally calmed down after two days and this allowed us complete control of where we could motor on the lake and which direction we wanted to troll. After catching a few smaller fish on perch colored crankbaits trolled down deep in the water column, I noticed a few higher fish on the sonar and decided to see if I could get those to go. The water clarity was pretty poor on Mon and there was a lot of debris in the water consisting of weeds. I’m guessing this was due to the strong wind blowing for two days. I decided to move a couple of bright colored Strom Deep Thundersticks (Green Fire UV and Pink Fire UV) up higher in the water column and this move paid off as we started to catch some bigger fish. At one time we had a fish in the net and the other planer board took off. Soon that one ended up in the net and then the leadcore line took off screaming. When it was all done we had caught 3 consecutive fish within 5 minutes and the last one was a 28 incher! Now that’s what open water trolling is all about!

Another key to our success was being able to figure 8 these fish. Every time we hook a fish out there, I set a waypoint so we can stay on the school. This is very important because these fish are constantly moving out there looking for baitfish. The key is to line up 2-4 waypoints in an area and then troll through that area again and again. You will be amazed how you can stack up your waypoints in a very small condensed area.

We ended the day catching 18 walleyes and 6 went home with us. We also accomplished our goal and caught some bigger fish in the 25-28 inch range. What a great way to end the year of open water trolling. There’s still some fish to be caught out there but not for me. I will now spend all my time converting over to hunting whitetails as the bow opener is less than two weeks away. It was a very memorable year of open water trolling and I want to thank everyone in my boat for the great stories that were shared along the way.

As I was motoring back to the landing Mon night driving right into a beautiful sunset, I started to think about what an unbelievable fishery Mille Lacs is and how truly blessed we are to have it in our own backyard. It’s so easy to take that for granted and I can’t imagine what my summer would consist of if it didn’t exist. Fishing on Mille Lacs has brought me so much joy in my life and my family and it’s also responsible for countless friendships. It’s amazing that a body of water and some fish can do all that!

Next year I’m considering putting on some more open water trolling clinics that consists of a short seminar and then we will spend a day on the water together implementing the open water trolling system. Please let me know if you’re interested in something like this and I will add you to the list.

Until next time – keep trollin’