Mille Lacs Tournament wrap up

What a month! I spent the month of May and part of June on Lake Mille Lacs. Early May found us anticipating the MN walleye opener, and looking forward to the Big D Classic. The hype was well warranted! What a bite, and what a fishery! Fish started off in their usual haunts for early season. The bobber bite on the rocks was hot as a pistol. (And still is!) And the sand to the north was exceptional for the first two weeks as well. The culmination of the tournament brought a catfish zealot (Deiman/Burble) to the scales with the winning weight! Who would have thunk it??? Now we have a whole year to listen to how easy these walleyes are to catch compared to cats, etc.

I was sent to California for new job training during the FLW League event which saw Josh Hukriede cash a check! (Way to go Josh!) and other IDA’ers did well too! Once I returned from California, it was back to the “Big Lake” to prepare for the upcoming MTT and Wave Wacker. The fish were relating to the deeper rocks, and seemed quite active. One thing for sure was that these fish were not fussy! They were on the chew big time! Hammering spinner rigs by Scenic Tackle (Sold by B-Fish-N Tackle!) and crawlers. Leeches long lined took neutral fish that we could see on the graph, but would not take the spinners. We would go over them a few times, and take the active fish off with spinners, and turn to the slooooow leech, and pick up a few more. One thing for sure was, if you could see them, you could catch them. This is a picture of a 28.5″ fish that took the Scenic Spinner Rig. It only weighed 6.66#.

Mike and Renee Holt and their staff from the MTT put on one of the best tournament trails a person could fish in my opinion. Great venues, and great people. We fished both the Saturday and Sunday “One Day” tournaments on June 3rd and 4th. LeRoy Carl and I finished 3rd in the Saturday tournament, and Bob “Bobber” Carlson and his partner Mike Gangl fisnished 5th! Sunday Bob and Mike finished 2nd! Quite a weekend for a couple IDA’ers. Our fish were again relating to deep rock structures. Bob and Mike are still tight lipped about their seceret presentation and location…

Getting ready for the Wacker was an absolute blast! I have fished Mille Lacs since I was 10 years old. I have never seen the lake in a condition it is in right now! The lake is teeming with life! From bugs coming up out of the flasts, to small perch and tulibee schooling on and around the flats and rocks. The walleye have been very easy to find, and have been very cooperative as far as the bite goes. I fished the Wave Wacker with Brad Dirkman of Fergus Falls. Brad brought some good luck to the boat on Wednesday of this week. I wanted to get the deep water trolling bite established. Something I could not do during the MTT. We did. In a BIG way! Our first pass through an icon trail developed a few years back with the help of Steve DeZurik. This pattern was responsible for our 2003 win during the then RCL League. We stuck two identical 28.5″ fish on the first pass! (No camera in the boat! DUH!) We went on to flat hopping. We literally caught fish on every flat we hit! Leeches on long lines, and crawlers on spinners. All produced. We decided that our approach for day one of the Wacker was to “Fly or Die!” We went for the big fish. We caught 20 fish in the 24″ to 27″ size range. But none over the sacred 28″. So when you look at the day one results, you will see that we zeroed. But it did not tell the story of the fun we had out trolling the “Abyss!” The mid lake “Non-Structure.” Friday (The first picture in this report) we got blown off the spot! We had 4 footers to contend with. We did land fish trolling, but got rocked. The G3 185 XT handled it very well! This is a great big water boat! We retreated to the east side of the lake and caught 7 slots in an hour! Probably should have done that first on Thursday! Oh well! There is always next year! Many thanks to St. Croix Rods, G3 Boats, Yamaha Motors and BFT and Scenic Tackle!