The fishing seems to be holding up pretty good on Mille lacs. The bugs continue to hatch and the weather has been stable.
I was on the water most of last week. Finally getting my motor running properly thanks to the factory Suzuki technican that came to my location to solve my problem. It turned out to be the prop that I was using was creating an exhaust restriction. The motor is now running flawlessly and I cant thank Crystal Periz Marine enough.
I spent very little time chasing walleyes last week. With the heat and bugs, I mainly wanted to gun down some small mouth bass and muskies and hopefully find some mille lac bluegill. I mainly worked the rocks, shorelines and weeds. I found a few smaller small mouth under the shoreline docks and boated a nice Mille lacs bucketmouth on a B-Fish-N Ringworm which is pictured above. I didnt spend much time in along the shorelines except for a stretch of shoreline rock that always holds nice smallies. I did see a few crawdads so I knew there had to be some fish around. after working that shoreline for two nights in a row covering every inch I could and no fish to show for it, I decided to hit the main lake as this shoreline was so green and the water was soo stained, I couldnt locate any fish.
I then worked the main lake humps and islands with topwater baits. I had a tip that the fish were hitting tubes very well but I will work a topwater bait till my arms fall off to see a fish explode on the water. I spotted many fish in 3-5 feet on the main lake. I was working the tops of the rocks and noticed another angler was really getting some nice smallies casting plastics. I kept working a Rapala Skitter Prop with no success and was starting to realize the topwater bite may be too early until I was looking ahead and saw three huge pigs sitting up in about 2 feet of water. I made a cast beyond them and as soon as the bait hit the water, I got the explosion I was looking for. It happend so fast, I had no time to even react. This told me there were even more fish up shallow that I couldnt see from where I was casting. I reeled in a tossed my bait out again and made two jerks of the bait and wham. This time the fish came all the way out of the water and I got an excellent look at her. She had to go 6 pounds and I had her hooked good. We fought back and forth and then the rod went slack. I reeled my bait in to find the back treble hooks had broken clear off. There is a wire going through the Rapala Skitter Prop that holds the back trebles on, it was broken off at the tail. I can only think it may have been a defect on that bait. I had no more action that night but the next evening I worked the weeds with a new Skitter Prop and had three misses. The fish in the weeds seem to just be playing with the bait rather than inhaling it.
I then had two muskie trips that produced some smaller pike and three large muskie follows. One of the muskies was in the 50 inch class that followed the bait to the boat and just sat there staring at us. My client about did a number in his pants as I was instructing him to put his bucktail back in the water and "oval" the bait to trigger a strike. The fish simply swam under the boat and was gone.
The second picture is a couple of nice walleyes we caught on slip bobbers and leeches. One of the fish was a product of the new slot. I dont normally like to keep fish bigger than 20 inches but this fish was bleeding bad after we got it in the boat. We caught many smaller fish in the 11-13 inch class. During the day I was pulling Rapala Jointed Shad Raps on leadcore. I was pulling a #7 Firetiger in 29 feet of water with 85 feet of line out. The bait was just hovering off the bottom. I kept marking nice fish just off the bottom but only caught perch. But they were nice jumbos that I didnt feeling like cleaning.
I plan to keep chasing smallies and muskies from now until the end of August. I want that smallie back very much and I have never been more hooked on them fish as I am right now…
Good luck and see you on the water.