After a busy couple of months where minor events kept getting in the way (Getting married & preparing for our soon to come first child) I was finally able to find time for the important things in life… Chasing walleyes with my dad and brother on Mille Lacs! Thankfully, in spite of my serious neglect of our relationship over the past few months, Mille Lacs proved to be in a very forgiving mood.
The plan of attack was to troll crankbaits and before even leaving the dock we started in the harbor at Fisher’s Resort where we got a great update from Dean on where they had been finding success over the past few days. Then looking at the wind forecast and noting a stiff SE breeze we planned our trolling runs accordingly to put the wind at our back allowing us to hold a constant speed and keep our planer boards from surging in the waves.
Our first lines hit the water at just before 6 PM with a smorgasbord of different colors and sizes of cranks consisting of a Orange Fire UV Deep Thunderstick, Purple Clown Flash Rapala TD-11 Taildancers, Hot Steel #7 Shad Rap, and a Gold Alburns Scatter Rap Minnow. Less than 5 minutes later the Scatter Minnow rod doubled over and my dad was hooked into a solid 24" walleye. He barely had time to get the rod back out again it doubled over again and my brother grabbed the rod and swung into action. Realizing that this was our deepest line I quickly let out an extra 10′ of line on our Thunderstick rod and lowering it just that extra couple feet immediately triggered another strike. There are often little clues that when pieced together correctly will make a huge difference and on this day one of those clues was that both fish had small leeches attached under their gills meaning they were really hugging the bottom so we reeled in the planer boards and sent our long lines way out to 175′ putting them just barely above bottom and in short order they were also producing.
Being my first time getting out to the basin this year rather than doubling back to fine tune our presentation on the same school of fish we opted to keep moving and cover as much water as possible. We encountered similar results in several areas with leadcore rods running right on the bottom (4 colors of lead [Suffix 832 Advanced] for scatter raps & 3-3.5 colors for TD-11’s & Deep Thundersticks) being the best producers early in the evening then as the sun dropped towards the horizon the fish started to move up in the water column to feed and planer boards set with TD-11s between 110-125′ behind the board began to take over.
Rapala Scatter Minnows were the winner for best lure of the day with Taildancers being a close runner up. This was a very pleasant surprise as with the success that I’ve had previously open-basin trolling if the scatter rap continues to perform at the pace it did on Saturday it could mean putting an extra 8-10 fish in the boat per day!
We ended the evening with around a dozen healthy walleyes and the only negative about our trip was that it only lasted a few hours. It’s only Monday and I already can’t wait to get back up there next weekend… I hope to see some of you up there as well!
A few more pics from our basin trolling trip. We ended up with 3 doubles and an almost triple as our 3rd fish came off on a board while we were fighting two leadcore fish.
Our basin run literally turned into a shakedown trip when my boat counsel came loose while pounding waves on the ride home… Which meant we were stuck close to shore on Sunday. We decided to give it a go pulling spinners along some of the Malmo area weedlines. In the past I’ve never been impressed with the store bought harnesses so I’ve always tied my own, but last summer I picked up a pack of VMC Revolution harnesses because they came with quality beads, VMC hooks with triple barbs, flourcarbin line, plastic clevises which allow for quick changing of blades, and come in longer 6′ lengths. The fish weren’t relating to the weeds as much as I had hoped with a strong South wind blowing in, but I was very impressed with the harnesses. They caught just as many fish as my hand tied harness and I won’t mind at all not having to tie new harnesses every night after fishing.
Sounds like a great trip.
When you say 4 colors of lead, are you talking advanced 832 with a 7′ sink rate, or standard lead with 5′?
Also, what length leader were you running off the lead and what dive profile do you feel that scatter minnow has?
Thanks in advance!
Great question. We were using 832 Advanced leadcore with a 30′ leader of 12# Suffix Flouro. Now that I’ve switched all my reels over I guess I’ve just gotten used to talking in 832 terms
The added depth of a scatter minnow at 30′ back is about 4-5 feet. This was putting our lures between 32-33′ down in 33-33.5 FOW. We were running our lures within 6″ to 1′ off bottom and had to keep checking to make sure we didn’t accidently get just a bit too low.
Awesome fish will looks like you had a great day on the water. I noticed the purpledescent Rapala Tail Dancer that is one of my top producers here on Green Bay. Take care and hope all is well.
Paul Delaney
http://www.lateeyessportfishing.com
Great report (as always), Will.
Do you find that there’s a difference in catch rate between the lines on the boards compared to those that aren’t? I am going to be up fishing tomorrow with my soon-to-be father-in-law, and I really want to get him on some fish (just working on that dowry, doncha know!!!
).
With only two lines in the boat, we’ll have a bit harder time narrowing down the bite….It’d be helpful to know if I should kick both lines out on boards right away, keep both without the boards, or just do one of each. I notice that it was pretty windy…might it matter if there’s a nice chop vs. a flat-calm day?
Sorry for the annoying questions, but I gotta get this guy on some fish, and I haven’t fished the lake for close to two weeks.
Great to see muti- generation’s on the lake! Nice fish!
Great job one the family outing Will !!!
Mama and I are trying to plan a trip up for a long weekend… We love that open basin trolling bite !!!
I am really looking forward to pulling some of the scatter raps as we did up on LOTW !!!
Gold Alburnus! My favorite.
Will, you and I pulled leadcore that last day on the Scatter Rap Challenge and did really well for both numbers and big fish. Did you modify the program at all for Mille Lacs given the better water clarity? Longer leader, or didn’t they seem to mind the shorties that we were running?
After the challenge, the Scatter Minnow and Scatter Shad have earned their own 3700 box in my trolling bag. Glad to hear you’re putting them to use on ML!
Joel
Great job Will – Glad to see you putting the
down.
I’ll should get out for 1/2 day on Wednesday evening.
My LOTW MTT event went fine. I think we ended up 28th out of 50 (middle of the pack) but boy did we ever catch a lot of quality fish. A great time!
I hit WInnie the first weekend of Aug. Take care and good luck next weekend.
Any hot tips on where to start Wed in the basin?
I can relate to your boat trouble. LOTW greeted us with 5 footers and I just got done with repairs on the boat this week.
Awesome outing and in just a few hours with all those fish, that’s fabulous!
Absolutely there are days or even changes throughout a day where one is outproducing the other. A general rule of thumb is that on calmer days getting your lure away from the boat is better when on windy days, even while trolling with the wind, the waves will cause your boards to surge and I tend to prefer leadcore as it allows your baits to run more smoothly. In all honesty though many times I don’t know exactly why one is out-performing the other so I would reccomend starting by running one of each. Also keep a close eye on your electronics and if you see fish suspended a few feet off the bottom make sure to get a board out and set it about 1-2′ above where you are marking suspended fish
On all my Mille Lacs set ups I run a 30′ leader Joel… That’s not saying a shorter leader wouldn’t work, but I have always prefered longer leaders in clear water. The way these fish were crushing baits on Saturday (we went 12 for 13 with most hooked on the front treble) I doubt it would have mattered