Mille Lacs – Early June Report.

I had the pleasure of spending the last 10 days fishing my favorite lake, Mille Lacs – AKA the Big Pond. The trip began with the rainy Memorial Day weekend. On and off rain, cold nights and water temps still in the lower to mid 50’s. Dinosaur and I basically approached the lake like we would on the opener weekend. We were targeting keeper slot fish in the 18 inch range and found them! Find key spots and anchor up and bobber fish or lindy rig with long 8-9 foot snells and jumbo leeches. The bobber fishing focused on the afternoon/evening bite on mid to shallow near shore rock structure in 11-17 feet. The last hour of the day before the 10pm lake closure is your best bet for a mix of slots and an occasional hog.

Lindy rigging jumbo leeches in 18-24 feet of water in sand/gravel areas. Look for the first breaks to the deeper water within the first mile from shore. Not far from the key evening areas. The mid lake bars were not as productive but there are fish there. Pull a crawler through these same areas and our results were disappointing to say the least.

By Friday the water had warmed to the low 60’s and another bug hatch had me reaching for the head net when the wind died down. These were what I call the beer flies. The little tiny one’s that crawl up your nose and get into your beer and stick between your teeth and….. Well you get the idea. This was actually a good sign that the lake is really getting back to normal. It also triggered the smaller 9-12 inch walleye to start to show up. I had not caught any of the gazillions of these fish the DNR nets indicate are in the lake. Although these fish are legal keepers, please let these shorties go to grow up!!

Mid week the weather took a turn to the warmer side and that change had me chasing the Smallies. I’m not an expert in this area but I brought all of my fall river plastics from B-Fishn-Tackle ( www.bfishntackle.com ) to toss at these brutes. As was the case last year at this time a K-Grub on a Super Do or H20 jig worked pretty darn well. I had success on both a gold fleck and green color patterns. My approach was to cruise the shallow 3-4 feet of water and sight fish the bass. About every 50 yards I came across a group of 3-4 bass and would get hooked up with these guys from time to time. Both short casts to the fish or long casts to the direction the fish were running to seam to work! Like I said, I ain’t no expert here, but that was a lot of fun for both myself and my wife who does not have the patience to wait between the walleye bites. This would be a great time to take a kid out casting for these fish.

The purpose of a vacation is not to work too hard! One has to kick back and enjoy as many of these as the Good Lord will let us look at while we are here on earth! Can’t wait to get back up there.