Mille Lacs Lake Ice fishing

Finally Mille Lacs Lake Ice fishing with a chance to test some of our cold weather gear. I just returned from 5 days at the lake. The last 3 days where spent fishing. Started Friday early morning with Bobber, Puddlepounder and I heading out on the atv’s well before sunrise. Bobber was leading the way scouting out some spots for some clients he had for the upcoming weekend. We fished flats, jumping from one area to another. I was using a weasel and switching up go devils and did hook into a few fish. Not sure what the others had on but they did alright also. I think we ended with 8 slot fish and a few over’s. Puddlepounder landed a 27" fish later in the morning. I snapped a few pictures but they didn’t work out for some reason.

Saturday I had the pleasure of running around the lake with some good friends of mine and there boys. My goal for the day was to put them on fish. What actually happened was I put myself on fish and they just tagged along in the morning hours. We had targeted walleyes in some rock areas that I had heard some good things about. After landing 3 nice walleyes we went in for some lunch and tried another spot. The boys where interested in some perch. We set up in a rock gravel area in 23-26 fow. We started marking fish immediately. It wasn’t long before we had a few perch on the ice. Some of them being a little smaller that went back. Then as evening approached we had a flurry of walleye action. The first picture is Michael with a dandy eye that he did one heck of a job bringing in. It was pure excitement as we all stood around and watched him with this fish on perch gear. Nice job Michael.

A few minutes later Eric landed this nice eye with what I believe was a buckshot tipped with a minnow. Nice fish Eric.

We did end the day with a few slot fish and some nice perch to enjoy a good fish fry. The colors of lures didn’t seem to make much a difference in my opinion (we used, gold, green, perch, red, silver, white, glows). It was more the presentation and getting them to hit it. I was using the chase method once I got them coming to the lure. Overall the fishing has slowed a bit since the last few outings. The arctic cold possibly had something to do with it.

I would like to thank the guys Joe, Brian, Mike, Michael, Eric and Derek for a fun time fishing. The weather was COLD and nobody cared!