Another Mille Lacs Planer Board Report 6.24-6.25

What a weekend to be cranking and pulling boards on the Pond. The bite was on FIRE for my boat on Saturday and saw some great action later in the day Sunday. To top it off, we had great weather and the waves stayed relatively small and calm for the most part. Both days were easy and relaxing days to pull cranks out in the middle of “No Where”. Alls I did was just turn on the ol’ Mercury Pro Kicker, kick back with the Troll Master remote in hand, with Brats and Dogs cooking on the bow, tunes cranked, your favorite beverage in hand and watching the planer boards get slammed, is how I spent a good 6-7 hours each day on the Pond this weekend. I experienced a great bite both days, but Saturday was definitely the better of the two days. Pulling fish like this on is a great way to enjoy a day with one of your College Buddies. Here is Torres Personal best Mille Lacs eye. Read more to see how this beauty “KEEPER OVER” fish plus many others like it came to the boat this past weekend.

Saturday I shared my boat with 2nd time IDA model and long time LURKER Torre. The last time we fished was Memorial Day weekend, where Torre landed his largest Mille Lacs eye @ 25”. Well he surpassed that mark and surpassed it many times Saturday as we worked the Cranking / Board bite on one of my( for Tuck) “honey holes”. It took a little while to get them dialed in and figured out, but as soon as we did. It was fish after fish, after fish, for about 3-4 hours with 2 doubles, until we were chased off the lake around dinner time by the weather. We were also joined by my buddy Chris and his wife Angie as they two got into some great fish and Angie pulled her personal best 2 walleyes as they trolled along side us. Towards the end of the day with Chris and Angie watching, Torre and I had a fish on and as Torre was cranking the board in, the other one got slammed. Torre yelled, “FISH ON – DOUBLE”. I cranked the 2nd board boat side and let it sit next to the boat as I netted Torres Fish. I told Torre to grab the other rod, while I took that 2nd board off. Torre cranked in the other fish while I unhooked the first fish. With the crank all wrapped up in the net and with the 2nd fish only a few feet from the boat, I grabbed the rod and the net together as one and swooped the second fish into the boat. After throwing them on the “Judge” we had a 27.5” and a 27.25” double shown here in the 2nd pic. We had Chris and Angie come over and take a few pics and we released the fish to swim another day. Come days end we boated a handful of fish over 27” with many others that went 22-26”. Sunday I shared the boat with my brother Rich and our buddy Curt with similar results. We also did have 2 fish make the drag scream and take the boards all the way down under the water. The bad part of Day 2 is no Digital camera, but we did take a few with a camera phone I will post below (lower quality photos).

These cranking fish are relating to no specific structure or flat. They are relating or following the pods of bait fish and bugs that are hatching. The Mayflies on Friday night were out in full force and made for a tough bobber bite for my boat on the flats. These bugs are spread through out the entire water column and bringing in the bait fish and predator fish to where ever the bugs are. I graphed a ton of fishing high in the water column, that were 6-12 feet down in 32-35 feet of water. You must trust your electronics and where ever you are marking fish, consult your trolling bible and using your line counters get the lures into the "HOT ZONE". I experienced something that I have yet to experience pulling boards and that is fish that were biting short and coming unglued before even picking up the rod from the rod holder. This weekend I had 15-20 fish thatwould hammer the crank and send the board a twitching for a good 3-6 seconds, before it was gone. Even most of the fish that came to boat were barely hooked an often came un-hooked as soon as it was netted, mainly only having one of the rear trouble hooks in its lip. What worked for me this weekend was pulling “Perch” and “Firetiger” Deep Tail Dancers and old reliable “Cheap Sunglasses” Deep Reef Runners at speeds of 2.0-2.3 mph with many “S” turns put in the mix. Saturday we were able to troll an direction being it was calm enough, but Sunday there was a definite pattern that the fish wanted the cranks going with the wind. We mainly targeted and ran our baits 26-28 feet down. Although a few of our fish were taken in the 12-20 foot range. The fish like mentioned earlier, are spread out through the whole column. I’m working with some new baits and little different presentations that I hope to tweak and become more efficient at and look forward to reporting on this in hopefully very near future.

It was great seeing other IDA’ers (Tuck, Josh, Leroy, Brian H.) out having similar luck and enjoying big fish coming to the boat via planer boards and crank baits. With a 4 day weekend ahead, I’m looking forward to try different methods of putting eyes into the boat this weekend as also chasing some of those bronze backs up on the pond. Something I have yet to do. The fish are still biting up on Mille Lacs, so I suggest coming up and spending some time either corking, pulling spinners, rigging with leeches & crawlers, or pulling boards and cranks. I hope to see some IDA’ers out on the pond this coming Holiday weekend and I’ll see some of you @ the Formica Flat this weekend! . Let’s all try to remember to be safe, extra aware of others, and courteous this weekend as many others will be on the water that are not used to operating on the water or will be operating when they shouldn’t be. Until next time have a safe time on the water and bring along the kids to do some fishing. waytogo:

**CLICK ON PICTURES TO ENLARGE**