For those of us looking for cold weather, its here! As a result, Mille Lacs will finally start to button up. On Monday, Dec 20th I took another run around the lake to see how the ice was looking, hoping to get to a few different spots. I found the ice to be very inconsistent, but I managed to get to one of the areas I wanted to try with some good results.
As of Monday a majority of the main lake was sitting at five to seven inches, but with the wind we have been having, the ice sheet has been shifting around. The result is huge areas with only a few inches of ice and other areas that still have open water. The cold weather this week will shape things up nicely, but I still expect to find some thin areas and even some open water into next week. Caution always has to be used when traveling on the ice, especially on a lake the size of Mille Lacs.
The final spot we ended up fishing we took the ATV as far as we could and then we walked the remainder of the journey. It was worth the walk, because we caught some nice fish. The biggest fish was just under the 28 inch mark, but it was definitely eating well. We had three other fish 23 to 25 inches and a couple of smaller fish come through the ice. We were fishing near the top of a break in 16 feet. We moved around and tried several different depths, but 16 seemed to be the magic number on this outing. We were both jigging with glow devil jigging spoons and had shiners out on tipups.
After Christmas I have more trips scheduled, and I’ll be able to get up some more reports.
Adam great report and pic’s. This lake time after time produces great walleyes, water or ice seem not to matter. It must be nice to fish a great lake like this one.
Thanks for the report Adam. The sharing of different ice thickness and as to why is very helpfull for people to understand why this happens and makes everyone more cautious when on the ice.
This alone can save lives and help everyone have an enjoyable ice fishing season. Much appreciated. Thanks, Bill