Hot Weather Equals Hot Fishing on Mille Lacs

Growing up on a farm the hot sunny days of July and August meant it was time to hit the fields. As the old saying goes "You’ve got to make hay while the sun shines" While most people would never associate this sentiment with walleye fishing, the truth is July and August on Mille Lacs can also lead some of the best fishing of the year.

Seeing as circumstances have put me back at our family farm a lot this summer as the temperatures climbed into the high 90’s last week it was no surprise that I found myself back in Malmo spending time on a tractor instead of the boat, but knowing how hungry this weather will make the walleyes I knew all it would take was a couple hours to have a great day on Mille Lacs. Sure enough, with rain showers coming through and getting in the way of work I was able to find enough time to break away a couple times and to chase old marble eyes with some old friends and a couple new ones as well.

On Thursday rain showers forced us out of the fields early and I was happy to be able to spend time in a boat with my good friend Erik as well as my brother Adam and his girlfriend Jamie who were all up helping on the farm. It was close to 6 PM when we hit the water so we didn’t mess around and headed straight for the basin to pull large crankbaits looking for trophy class walleyes. If it’s any indication of the quality fishing on Mille Lacs this year, I was disappointed that we "only" were able to land seven walleyes in 3 hours of fishing. The best pattern turned out to be running blue/chrome Storm Deep Thundersticks on leadcore using 3 colors and a 30′ Flourocarbin leader to keep our baits down within 3-5′ of the bottom.

On Saturday morning I was able to make another quick trip with a good friend, Brad. With just 2-3 hours to fish we decided to maximize our fishing time by focusing our efforts on the shoreline structure near Fisher’s Resort where we had launched. Right away we picked up a couple nice box fish on crawler harnesses, but that bite died once the sun was overhead and we switched to pulling crankbaits along sand/mud transitions to cover water quickly looking for schools of fish. Typically I find that smaller profile baits are best when fishing structure and breaklines as they most closely match the forage in these areas so we were using #5 shad raps and #4 Salmo Hornets. By using crankbaits to cover water quickly and watching our electronics to search for schools of fish/baitfish we were able to quickly find an area holding fish and start to put together a pattern. We ended our short day with a double as we each pulled in matching 24" walleyes. The hot lure for this trip was a purple/chartruese #5 orginal shad rap.

As my time up North was winding down on Sunday I got a text from fellow IDO member Corey (Alwayseyen) asking how the open basin trolling bite had been. Seeing as I had been stuck on a tractor most of the week I didn’t have much information for him, but as luck would have it a rain-cloud showed up almost immediately after his text so I gave him a quick call and we made plans to meet up in Garrison and rip some lip. Also joined by Corey’s friend Mike we decided to grab the trolling rods and head for the basin. We decided to try a different area than earlier in the week and it paid off nicely as we were able to boat 16 walleyes with several in the 26-27" range in just over 3 hours. As usual we started out running multiple colors and styles of baits on different rods, but after quickly boating 2 fish on a Purple Clown Flash TD-11 run 133′ back on a board we switched our 2nd board to the same, when it immediately started thrashing we switched our leadcore rod to a Blue/Chrome TD-11 and it was game-on! The rest of our night was constant action with several doubles and is exactly why I never buy a lure without getting 2 of the same color since this was a night where if you didn’t have multiple Chrome TD-11’s you were missing out!

As I heard multiple times over the past week, "The dog days of summer are here early" Maybe so, but it’s also the perfect time to head up to Mille Lacs Good luck out there everyone!