Switching Gears on Mille Lacs 7.16.05

Well, I’m finally getting around to posting a report from the Pond form last Saturday! Had some picture technology problems, was unable to take some pics and lost some others pics. Saturday found me switching gears and doing something I have not done for about a month. I was rigging live bait on the flats instead of trolling boards and cranks, with my brother Rich. Rigging live bait is no doubt my favorite way to fish on Mille Lacs. It was great to tussle with some mid 20” fish rigging with my ML rod again! The morning started out a little slow, with a few missed opportunities, but then around 8 am things started to come together and we found a presentation that the fish liked. Here Rich is holding up are largest fish for the day, a nice fat 25.5" fish we caught rigging.

I started out the day with a 8′ snell red hook and trying both leeches and crawlers. I had my brother set up with a 12-13′ lindy with black hook and leeches. We were working the NE side of the flat out on a little finger where the top of the flat couldn’t have been more than 50′ wide. We were back-trolling into the wind and going from 31 feet of water up the edge to of the flat to 24 feet of water across the 50′ wide flat and back down the other side. We would then slip back-troll with the wind to where we started and repeat the same process over and over again. The reason I was doing this instead of just putting out the drift sock and drift across the flat like most people, was for two reasons: I for one, was controlling my speed and moving at an absolute crawl and leaving that bait in front of the see fish as long as possible. Some people would make a long drift across the entire flat and reset before I would even move across my short finger. The other reason is I was graphing most of these fish just on top of the flat, near the edge or on the break. Controlling my drift (both speed and location) with my electric motor left me in more productive areas the entire time rather than drifting across the middle of the flat when most fish were stacked up along the edges. Once 8 am hit and my brother went up a quick 3-0 on me. I had to switch over to using a longer snell, I just couldn’t take it any more. Another interesting thing that was a topic on the Mille Lacs forum the other week. He was dragging his sinker on this flat. I wasn’t, and was not getting the same amount of bites. So as soon as I switched over to dragging with a 12′ snell, I too started boating more fish. We were starting to boat a nice fish every 15-20 minutes, with a few dinks and perch mixed in. The flat we were on was holding a good number of some nice 20-24" fish. The 2nd picture here is a pic of a new Mille Lacs slot fish that came in a 1/8" under the new 22" slot limit (Good Money Fish). We caught a lot of fish that were around this size +/- an inch and quite a few that were tagged. These are some very healthy fish. We ended up only keeping 2 of these new slot fish plus a 14.5" that did not look like he would make it. My brother Rich did end up loosing one BIG fish right at the boat that we never seen due to the long snell, it was still under the boat. That would have been really a nice fish to cap off the day with a piggie!

The third picture is a zoomed (2x) in picture of the bottom 2/3 depth on my graph, showing the fish on top of the flat that morning. This was not a very good pic or representation of the school, but there were fish stacked all through the water column. We were in the mother load as fish and baitfish were every where. If it was not so crowded I would have loved to try trolling for some of those "higher fish". But that would have been next to impossible with all the traffic out there! With it nearing Noon and the sun up high. I got that itch to go and see where the schools of fish that I have been working on the board bite were. Just to keep in touch with them So we decided to go cranking for 2 hours and get off the lake. We ended up having 3 hook ups with 2 fish coming to the boat. And after having picture/technology problems like I stated earlier, we had remembered Rich’s camera phone while we trolled. This beauty nice fat 24" eye hit the board on a Black and Gold Reef Runner @ around 27′ down to finish the great day on the pond.

I’m really impressed on how good the bite is going on the pond right now, considering we are coming up on the end of July and the hot weather we have been having. I think fish can be taken on all presentations right now. I watched a guy that was anchored very close to where I was rigging Saturday. He was slip bobbering the break and probably doing better than anyone else that was around. The board bite is still going on with some really nice fish being taken and then the rigging bite is also exceptional right now. As always, what I notice is doing the little things make the big difference. Either snell/line length, boat speed, hook/lure color, bait, etc. to putting more fish in the boat I believe that the bite is going good enough now that most people catch fish, but doing the little things can end up putting more and better fish in the boat for you I hope everyone is getting a chance to get out on the water and it looks like it may be another scorcher here this weekend. Have a great week!

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