My report today will have to give credit to our own Grant, aka – gpalma. Grant had e-mailed me a week or so ago of a spot that he had produce some dandy jumbo perch. Today I finally made it out to his spot. In the past few weeks I have had some luck in a number of areas, one that was only 1 1/2 miles off shore. Today I started out early on my ATV and traveled out to gpalma’s spot on 8 mile flat.
The weather has been really nice to fish…….While many of our IDA members having been fishing the open waters of the Mississippi River we have still been enjoying some great perch fishing action on the hard water on Mille Lacs Lake. The ice conditions for the most part are good, although the lake roads are starting to flood pretty bad. I would suggest the use of ATV’s from this weekend on….I noticed most guy’s that were driving trucks, drove along the side of the roads and stayed out of the water. The surface of the lake is fine with very little snow. The ice depth is around 30 inches and the surface of the ice has not started to honeycomb at all!
I found my fish in 28-30 feet of water today after drilling around 30+ holes. I caught my perch jigging a green/orange weasel with a minnow head. The best time was around 8:30-9:15am. The two biggest perch of my morning catch weighed in at 1.4lbs and 1.2lbs shown in the above photo. The 1.4 pounder measured 13 inches long. I ended up keeping a half limit of 1/2 lb’s on up.
We should have a couple of week’s of ATV use yet to enjoy. Make sure to check with your local bait or resort prior to your trip and get the current lake conditions.
Thanks for the report from your neck of the woods Bobber, those are some dandy looking perch!!!