The walleye bite on mille lacs continues to be good. I spent the weekend fishing with a crew of IDA members and my buddy Craig. The weather was unreal. Rain, snow, mild temps, freezing windchill. Mother nature threw us everything but we kept on going.
Saturday morning we met up with Bobber, Luke, D-man, Tuck, other IDA members at Hunters. As always the food was excellent. The game plan was to head out to the mud for the walleye bite. It didn’t take long to connect with fish. Gold Go-Devils are hot right now. Firetiger being second. The fish are really eating right now and paying close attention to your electronics is key. Many fish are coming in like a freight train on your bait only to inspect and swim on.
We worked the tops and edges of the flats. Depths of 26-32 feet are producing. Now that’s a large window of depth for fishing the mud but using your Lakemaster chip on your GPS, look for the wide contour areas that are leading off the edges of the mud and also on top of the flat. These are the areas that hold the silty sticky bottom that produce lots of bugs. This is where the bait fish are holding and keeping the walleyes full. A 14 incher we caught today puked up two tiny perch and a whole dace minnow. Like I mentioned, the fish are cruising in on your bait. Punch lots of holes and be MOBILE. Hole hopping is crucial. Work each hole for 10-15 minutes. Thump your spoon and draw as much attention as you can. When you see fish show up, slow down and even lift your bait up 1-3 feet and trigger the strike.
Tip: When hole hoping and you immediately see fish off bottom, don’t sail your bait down the hole on top of the fish. Once you see your bait show up on your flasher 5-6 feet off bottom, stop it and slowly start to jig it down to the fish. And keep your spoon tipped with fresh bait. Deadsticking small minnows on bobbers also took a few fish as well.
Saturday we had 8 fish over 25 inches and many nice slots.
My buddy Craig was on fire this weekend. I think he about caught every fish he hooked into. I was not so fortunate. I have never hooked so many fish only to have them come unglued. I even switched trebles twice. Thats fishing I guess.
Saturday nights rain made the lake a complete mess. People were scrambling to get their houses off the lake. Never have I ever seen it pour like that in late December. Sunday morning lake traffic was almost non-existent. Then the snow storm and strong winds blew from the NE. I opted to relax and catch up on some much needed sleep while Craig headed out to the 2 mile for the evening bite and came back with his limit of slot fish. 29 feet of water using crappie minnows and slip bobbers.
Today we met up with Bobber again at Hunters and decided to try the gravel for the morning bite. One small walleye and not much showing up on the flashers, we decided to run to the mud and check out the ice conditions. Then Bobber gets the call from George for a Snow-Bear trip. We bumped into IDA member Cleareye on the gravel and invited him and fellow IDA member Brent Peterson to join us on the mud.
Once again we connected with fish right away. Probably should have gone there right off the bat. But the lake looks spooky with patches of frozen shadowy rain under the ice. All the rain has frozen solid from Hunters to the mud. I do not recommend travel unless your with an experienced guide or resort personal. There is a large hole almost dead center in the middle of the lake. Looks like a large house went down. Today we heard some rumbling coming from the northend. Breakers were shifting. Again, do not travel to the main lake until we get some colder weather. And always check with the resort first. They have the current ice conditions.
Good luck and be safe.!!
Craig with one of his nice slots.
Craig with a nice fatty.
Good to finally met you Luke!!!
Heres Luke with a Go-Devil walleye..
And his first Mille lacs Pout.
And getting checked by the warden.
BTW, you owe D-man a brew..
Speaking of D-man
LOL!! Great report Derek…I’ll take care of Doug…
Thanks for taking a picture of me and the warden..
Turned out the warden was named Luke and was from Iowa. I think they both chatted the rest of the day. Matter a fact we were off the lake and they were still out there talking..
JK 
Nice trip Derek, and nice report.
thanks.
Jack…
Thanks for getting a report up Derek and Luke!
Been alttle busy…..I hope to do a report tonite, no time right now
It was really fun to fish with the IDA group the other day…don’t remember what day! Friday,Saturday?? they all run together…..we caught some pretty good numbers, some bigger fish and lost some hogs
Derek,
It was nice meeting you and craig yesterday we stayed until 5:00 or so picked up a few more.
I got to see the snow bear in action pretty slick deal that is.Although i personally didn’t meet you Bobber next time.
Derek,
It was really nice to finally meet you and Craig. Thanks for a great day…I would agree with derek, be very careful out there…running into open water out several miles and ALOT of spooky looking frozen water on top of the ice right now. If you are heading out, I would give Derek a call…a guided trip with someone who has a plot trail to get you on fish! Big fish and alot of nice keepers.
Great report Derek. What kind of line do you guys use for jigging glodevils? I need to get rigged up right soon.
thanks,
5 pound P-line
Great Report! Can’t wait til the IDA GTG. I hope we can hook up with some of you guys that know what you’re doing!
Todd
Nice report Derek!
JWB
Great report!!!
I just ordered another bunch of Go Devils and I can’t wait to get up there to try them out!!!
I have been using the 3# Fireline Crystal, and like it. You have to be careful to jig slower, and raise rather than hop in most cases with it. But it is VERY strong and darn near invisible on the camera.
Was that you guys out on the mud yesterday afternoon? We kind of had the flat to ourselves!!! You should of came over and knocked on the door!!! Hope ya did’nt here me when I lost that big fish………man I had a hog on!!
What size Go Devils are you guys using – 1/16, 1/8 or 1/4?
Thanks!
1/8 ounce!!
I hear you there Bobber right before you guy’s got out there i also lost a nice one
.
I had on 4 or 5 others that came unglued also thats a first for me.
We will just have to get after it again this weekend hopefully north and west of where we were.
Next time i’ll knock or see ya having
with george i’ll introduce myself. 
Awesome report!! I can’t wait to get up there again. I was up there on 12/30 but had to walk out. Caught some nice perch though.
I did the same thing, had to move around a ton to find any fish. I’m trying to go out of hunters this weekend to find them BIG walleyes. I have the fever…caught a 27.5in, 7.5lb walleye out of a “unknown” lake two days ago! Crappie fishig with a fatboy and larva!! Unbelievable!!