The walleye bite was slow in my boat on this 2004 opener. We found the water temperatures on the eastside of Mille Lacs from 49-50 deg’s. A bit on the cool side for an opening day. We managed a few fish rigging the Malmo sand on Saturday morning with this pic of my fishing partner Hook holding a 26 1/2 incher. The morning temperatures were a little cold for this old fisherman. We climbed into the boat that was covered in frost Saturday morning. The air temperature was 32 deg’s!
This next picture is of the crowd out front of Fishers Resort near Malmo. The sand was a bit on the crowded early Saturday. We rigged the sand with 6-8 foot long lindy rigs. We found the leeches being the choose of bait over night crawlers. The few active fish that we found Saturday were in the 17-19 feet of water. During the morning hours we saw very few walleye netted on the northend. With the cooler water temperatures I expected the sand to be much better fishing than it was. Some areas up on the sand were colder than the eastside rocks.
The Saturday Hook and I shared our boat with Mike Little from B-Fish-N Tackle. Mike is always a fun fisherman to have in the boat. We had lots of laughs with only 3-4 walleyes for our efforts. The boats that were anchored on the rocks near Picard Point caught very few fish from what we saw. The wind was blowing out of the south putting a nice chop on the lake, I thought we would have had much better luck than we did. We bobber fished in the 8-11 foot area.
Sunday morning we again hit the rocks on the eastside with some success. We boated a few walleye on some of the deeper drop off’s on the reefs. We caught walleye out in 20 feet of water. The total numbers for the weekend were down from past years, but it’s always great to get back on the water. I think Hook and I caught around 10-12 walleye total with only 3 fish in the slot. Many of the fisherman that I spoke with said that they caught very few fish…….slow weekend was the common reply!
Thanks for the report Bob,I was waiting to see how the IDA group did on opener.
Tough conditions for you guys it sounds like.Are you getting some bad weather(storms) also?
I’m sure the bite will improve with a few degree jump in water temps.
Ryan Hale
Thanks for the report bobber, I will be up on June 26th for the RCL League tournament, see you then if not before!
Yes………water temp?????
I was standing around the camp fire Friday night talking about water temp’s and saying that its too cold…….well it is and needs to get up in to the 52-54 range and the fish should take off. It was a very cold and wet at times fishing this weekend. Its raining out right now, I’m too tired to fish this evening. Maybe I’ll get back out tommorrow and give it another try.
Thanks for the report Bobber. Looks like you had your hands full with Hooks and Mike.
Glad to see you guys back on the water. Warmer days are coming and the fish will respond. Thanks for pointing out that changing depths can make a difference. Too many times we want to stay with whats not working and miss out on catching some more fish. 
Thanks, Bill
Hooks !!!
Is that you ? 
” Nice Walleye “
I didn’t recognize you in the day lite….Last time we fished together it was dark out !!
Good to see you got the Little Man out on the water too..
Thanks for sharing your opener with us Bobber..I look forward to seeing some more pix and reports from your back yard !!
I can completely echo your comments Bob. We fished the sand on Saturday, over on Carlsona mostly and west. We marked a lot of fish, but only had one 8 incher and one 18 incher come to the boat. I don’t think we saw 6 walleyes caught the whole day up in that area. We put in at the Malmo public launch, as soon as we hit the water, we knew we weren’t going down to Fisher’s.
Loading the boats on Saturday afternoon out of that landing proved to be hard on the props and scags for our group. No major damage, but some definite character marks. Loading in 1.5-2 ft. of water with a 1 foot chop is quite challenging.
We headed out about the time the wind was really kicking it up. We ate dinner back at Covebayguy’s cabin(what a place!), then headed for a reef on the southeast side of the lake for some slip bobber fishing. My boat stunk it up, but the other boat got two eaters and one in the third boat. We had the fish surrounded, because I watched a boat beside us limit out. After they moved out of the area, we tried moving into that spot, but as night fishing goes, we had nothing but problems. Needless to say by 11:00pm we headed off the lake for some R&R.
It was great to be on the pond again, I can’t wait for the water to warm ever so slightly to get all those fish we marked in the mood to feed more agressively.
Bobber, great report. We fished the sand for a few hours on Saturday and didn’t catch a thing. We marked a lot of fish by the culvert, but they weren’t going to bite. Saturday night we anchored off Picard Point in 6 ft. of water. We caught 10 walleyes and kept 3. We also got a 12 inch perch.
Bigfife,
we need to meet up sometime…….you didn’t happen to see me fall out of my boat seat Saturday nite? 6 feet off Picard…you fished up pretty shallow? We fished the far SW corner of the reef off Picard Saturday nite in around 10-12 feet.
Sat;Wegot 3 keepers 17-19in.Bobbering at Izatys from 2-5pm.Sun 1 18in. in covebay 10am-1pm Mon WOW what WAVES got 1 more in covebay by the point went to Izatys reef and got 5 keepers in about 2 hrs. But took a pounding with the wind Overall had a great time Good to meet Waterfowler Crossin eyes and the rest of there group.Better fishing ahead
