Mille Lacs Lake Rigging Walleye Report 07.06.13

Mille Lacs Lake and its Fireworks! The Red Door resort located on Mille Lacs Lake North side holds its annual walleye tournament the weekend after the 4th and it has become an annual event for Jake Hayes and me. This tournament brings out some of the best walleye fisherman from Mille Lacs lake and its surrounding areas. Local guides taking a break from guiding, resort owners, and some families vacationing at the Red Door all throw their hat into the ring for some fishing fun. This tournament consists of 2 one day tournaments, so do poor or well on Saturday means nothing on Sunday everyone starts equally.

Onto the fishing….Amazing…in fact unreal at times! Everything seems to be working right now, from traditional rigging, trolling spinners, basin trolling, leadcore trolling, and even corking are all catching fish, but to catch the right fish for the tournament is the tough part. Mille Lacs lake currently has a 2 fish limit per person. The 2 fish have to measure between 18”-20” or 1 of those fish can be over 28”, which is the tough part. Bringing 4 fish total to the scales. Jake and I chose to rig these fish, very simple traditional walleye fishing for lots of people. Our rigs consist of 10# Suffix 832 braid as the main line, ½ oz VMC Switch-It walker style sinker, barrel swivel, 10’Suffix fluorocarbon mono leader in 8lb, and a #6 VMC Wide Gap Walleye hook in glow color, and a simple leech. Back trolling at .4-.6mph was the ticket along the edge, point, top, or turn of ANY mudflat seemed to hold fish. Basically find the mud flats, mark fish, put above mentioned rig down. Feel the bite, feed a little line to allow fish to eat leech, close bail, feel tension from fish, and set the hook. Very important that you didn’t need to feed the fish much line as they were feeding very aggressively. It may sound very simple but nets were flying everywhere we looked. These Mille Lacs lake walleyes are feeding big time right now.

On Day 1 of the tournament things could not have worked better. We didn’t have to make any crucial decisions on what to keep. Such as if you catch an 18.25” fish early in the morning and that fish goes in the live well that is one you are required to weight that fish. Mille Lacs is a NO CULL lake, so no upgrading fish at any point once it’s in the box it counts towards your 4 fish for the day. Also once you put the 4th fish in the box your done fishing for the day, so deciding what to keep plays a huge role in tournament fishing. Our fish came in order on Day 1, 19.375”, 19.75”, 19.75” and at 10:20 am a 28.375”. We were done on Day 1 at 10:20am! We kept track of fish caught; we had 21 fish when we went in, so lots of varieties of sizes were being caught in the morning. We ended up weighing 12.16lbs go enough for 2nd place finish on Day 1.
Sunday brought a new day, flat calm conditions, and a bug hatch of the century! I counted 5 or 6 different bug species emerging from the lake throughout the day. With no wind these bugs were in your face all day long and made for some very tough fishing conditions. Wind helps in a few different ways, keeps bugs away and also helps fishing. Day 2 brought some tough decisions for Jake and I, we threw back some fish under 18.5” and found us fishing later in the day. We caught our 4th keeper at 3pm and headed in. Unfortunately I had a fish that was caught very early in the morning 19.875” die and in turn grew a little bit over the over the 20” mark in the weigh masters eyes. The smallest water membrane was over the 20” mark and was deemed illegal fish at weigh in, so we were disqualified. This is a lesson learned for a lot of people fishing the tournament because it happened to several others as well. At the time it was caught both sides measured under the 20” mark, we chose to box it and it counted towards our 4 fish for the day. Mille Lacs no cull rule plays a huge roll in tournament fishing and recreation fishing, please remember not to release fish once boxed or upgrade because you caught a bigger slot.

So a fishing recap, wow did we go through a lot of leeches. We had 21 walleyes on Saturday for just over 3 hours of fishing and Sunday we had 36 walleyes and 1 smallmouth for about 8 hours of fishing all rigging with leeches on the Mud Flats. We seen a drastic increase in water temp yesterday, started at 72 degrees and ended at 3pm pushing 80, so handling fish are becoming more critical with increased water temps. I would expect with the rising water temps for the trolling bite and spinner bite to get most of the attention moving into the rest of the summer.
A HUGE thanks goes out to the Red Door Resort and Staff, excellent job in running the tournament and a great meal of fish on Saturday night. Thanks also to Joe’s Sporting goods and Rapala/VMC.