Summer’s gone and the first official day of fall is in the books… that famous night trolling bite is upon us, yes?! The calenday says it should be… but walleyes can’t read apparently. 
For the last 3 days n’ nights I’ve been fun fishing with friends in search of a great walleye bite for up coming guide trips. I’ve yet to find it. 
Water temps are stable in the 63 – 65 degree range and the baitfish are thick in the shallows. We’re marking fair numbers of what we assume to be sizable walleye but the bite remains slow yet. We did have a good conversation with the DNR shocking crews as they launched out of Pikes Pt. on Wednesday night. They stated they’re seeing VERY low numbers of fish shallow to this point and many of the fish they’ve shocked and surveyed to this point are on the small size.
That said, we are catching fish each night. Too bad the numbers have been on the low side. Most fish we’re catching are on the plus side of 20" with our biggest walleye so far coming in at 26". We’ve hunted and searched deep to shallow and our best depths have been 8′ – 11′ of water along sand or weeds. We’ve had VERY poor success on rock to this point which has left us all a little puzzled. The bait is there on the rock reefs… the walleyes just don’t seem to be. Yet.
To this point our number one baits have been #12 Husky Jerks in clown and a Berkley Frenzy shallow diving minnow in firetiger. Trolling speeds have produced best when kept right around 2 MPH.
The pike and muskie bite has been slow but we have had our moments there as well. I fished with Steve Vick monday night and Tuesday during the day. We went on a muskie casting fest that resulted in sore arms and sholders but no fish… not even a single follow. Right at the end of the day we opted to do a little trolling to see if we could scare up a pike or two. My all-time favorite crank for catching "average" pike on mille lacs is the #5 jointed rap. Fished just outside the weedlines on 125 of line these smallish plugs flat out produce numbers of decent pike. It took about 10 minutes of pulling to produce the pike Steve is shown holding which of course left us shaking our heads a little over why we didn’t give up the casting earlier. For anyone looking for a little pike action that might not be overly concerned with catching huge fish, give those #5 jointed raps a try. They’re murder on the 5 – 12 lb fish!
This last photo is of a decent muskie we took while night trolling out in front of Malmo last night. We had heard the muskie bite had been pretty good in this area and we also wanted to check it out for some potential walleye action so off went went to an area of the lake we normally overlook. Again in this area the walleye wanted the clown HJ’s but this muskie fell for an Orange Craw #12 fished on a short line behind the boat. We kept graphing fish riding pretty close to the surface and thought they might have been walleye but a muskie of this size is always a welcome surprise. 
I’ll be putting up an every other day report while I’m up here on Mille Lacs. Look for my next report Sunday afternoon. Hopefully the cooler weather and the clear nights forecast for the weekend will kick things into a higher gear and I’ll have a better bite to report at the end of the weekend.
Sorry the Eyes aren’t cooperating yet, that being the case maybe you should consider beefing up the baits, kick down the throttle to 3.5 mph, and just chase the “walleye eaters” for a while
. Muskies fill up pictures so much nicer anyway… 
I may just have to do that.
Tonight’s my first guide night and we look to have managable winds and clear skies which will help out immensely.
JAMES, NICE LUNGE MAN. I BET THAT WAS A RIOT ON WALLEYE GEAR.
Nice picture and pretty fish James
Just curious, it’s hard to tell by the pic for sure, but was that musk a spotted one. Haven’t seen many that were totally spotted.
Nice fish Bud. Cooler nights will sure help with the eyes but sure nice to see the bigger species cooperating nicely.
Thanks, Bill
No, I don’t think it was. I remember it having the typical barring along the sides towards the back but that detail was lost in the photo. Night shots are always tough.
Last night we had another mongo ‘ski blow right at boat side. My customer was retrieving his plug and just as it neared the boat this big bugger took a big swipe at it… and come up empty.
The walleye fishing is picking up. Not gangbusters by any means but last night was solid with more fish and more large fish coming to the boat. A couple more nights and we should be rolling.
I was up there last night on the east side rocks south of big point and between the wife and I we boated 13 and lost one at the net.Biggest fish was a 27.5 and 5 others over 22 and 4 were under 14 all released.3 were 18-21 wich ended up in the livewell.We fished from just after dark to midnight and caught most of the fish in the first 2 hours.We were using #5 shad raps running 110-120 feet back on power pro 20/6 in 7-12 FOW water temp was 62.Clown caught the most with firetiger running a close second.
Dustin’s boat did best on shad raps as well last night. #5 deep divers and the #7 shallow shads in chartreuse n’ white. 100′ back in 5 – 7 foot of water on rock and gravel on the west side. My boat fished a different spot further north and we had our best luck on the berkley frenzy shallow runners in firetiger 100′ back ovr 9′ of water and we did pop 4 or 5 fish on the #12 HJ’s in orange craw (125′ back) although the HJ bite has been a bit off to this point. 2 – 2.2 mph has been best for us. Biggest fish last night was a 28.5″ followed by a 27″ and a few more 25″ – 26″ fish between the two boats. Decent numbers of 18″ – 21″ fish are showing up as well and for the first time in YEARS I may actually send someone home with some fish from Mille Lacs.
James by the sound of your reports you don’t use planner boards, is this true?
Nope. No boards. It’s hand to hand combat trolling and the fish just don’t seem to be spooked much if at all at night by the motor when we run the plugs right off the side of the boat.