Mille Lacs walleye report 6-24-07

I was able to spend another awesome 4 day weekend guiding some great people on Mille Lacs. There are still plenty of fish to be had for those willing to look for them. We started off the weekend by checking a near shore sand/gravel transition area that had putting out some big numbers of fish, but it had slowed a bit last weekend, and it slowed even more this weekend. We still marked plenty of fish, but also marked a big hatch that looked like it was coming up. Even with the wind blowing in and all the food available, we did not get the fish we expected, so it was off to the mud flats.

The mud flats are where we spent the rest of the weekend. Thursday and Friday we found the fish to be holding more towards the top edge of the flats, while on Saturday and Sunday we found them holding on the bottom edge and off the flats. I’m sure the boat traffic was pushing those fish off by mid day. We had better luck when we were pulling leeches on spinners than when using crawlers. We also did better with snells 6-7′ than the longer 10’+ which was nice as it makes landing fish a lot easier.

We had one flat in particular we came accross Friday that was a lot of fun. There appeared to be a small ammount of of mayflies coming off the bottom and the wind was pushing this bait away from the flat. While most boats would drift over the top or work the edges, we caught our fish 100 yards and more off the flat pulling 12′ snelled spinners with crawlers that we had aired up. It was nice to catch these fish away from others throughout the weekend. We tried to not use the net as to not draw too much attention!

We did spend some time trolling and had our best luck pulling #7 Flicker Shads in Firetiger behind 3.5 to 4 colors of leadcore. The smaller baits really outperformed the bigger Reef Runner size baits for us anyway. I even broke out the downriggers for a little fun as well as some practice for my up coming Lake Michigan trips and we did catch fish. I ran a mix of #5 Flicker Shads, #5 Shad raps, #9 Original Raps, and spinners and crawlers down 20-30′ over 35′ and caught fish on each. A little fine tuning on realease was in order, but it made for some enjoyable practice.

I am still amazed at the number of boats that are on certain pieces of structure come Saturday and Sunday. My best advice is to avoid the crowds, find a spot without the pressure and use you electronics ad look for fish. I would bet a person could double their catch by getting away on their own! Good luck!