Mille Lacs Lake fishing report 6-4-04

I have not been able to spend the quality time on the pond this week as I had hoped, but the 2 days that I did get out this week proved to find active fish. When you find the active schools of fish, the best thing to do is stay on them!

Both trips found my boat near the deep gravel areas looking for some active schools of fish. Trolling Rogues on leadcore over the past week had proved the winning ticket, but the past two trips have proven that simply long lining Smithwick Deep Rattlin Rogues over top over the Gravel flats became my most productive approach. Using in-line planer boards gave us the ability to take our lures out away from the boat in the clear calm water and prevent spooking any fish. Some of the fish we caught were riding pretty high off the gravel, while others were belly to the bottom. Snap weights come into play here as running depths of these Rogues will run about 19 feet on the deep side. This technique has accounted for about 10 fish per outing and a couple over the 28" mark this week.

Using the LakeMaster Reel Bottom Mille Lacs 1 foot contour Multi Media Card (MMC), we were able to troll around both the edges and tops of these structures. I cannot comment enough on how useful this Mille Lacs chip is to have while out on the water. Whether you are a rigger, troller, or a jigger, everyone can benefit from the technology that this map gives you. Simply take the MMC card and place it in your Lowrance global Map unit. Then simply turn your unit back on and set your unit up to read that MMC card (under map data) and you are ready to roll. Once you set your unit up to read that MMC card, each and every time out on the water the unit is smart enough to read that card unless you specify differently. No More paper maps to have flying around in the boat.

Simply drop icons or waypoints in the areas of your interest such as schools of fish, corner structure on a flat, caught fish, etc…. Utilizing the plot trail, you can zoom in and troll right back over the area exactly where you just were previously. I rely on this capability each day out on the water when I am on Mille Lacs or any other body of water for that matter.

Back to the fishing report…Producing colors have been all over the spectrum this past week, so recommending a certain color over another would be tough. My favorite starting color will always be a Firetiger color pattern and then adjust from there. The best piece of advice this time of year that I could give is to keep your eyes on your graph and trust what you are seeing. If you do not see a lot of fish, keep moving until you find fishy areas. The MTT tournament starts this Saturday and Sunday (June 5th and 6th) Mike Holt runs a good clean tournament and I am looking forward to fishing this event once again this year! Good Luck to all that make it back out on the big lake over the weekend.