BRF Mille Lacs Walleye Cranking Trip

Well during the 4th of July celebration I took some time and got Slack (Ron who is in the 1st pic) and his longtime fishing / high school buddy Herman out on Mille Lacs to pull some boards this past week. After a few obstacles we finally made it out. Slack was the high bidder on my donated trip to the Brandon Rolen Foundation Auction, with an extremely generous offer. I know the Rolen’s appreciate the help and generosity Ron. Ron was given a choice of either pulling cranks in the Summer on boards or whacking cranking fish during the Fall Full Moon. He chose the Summer Cranking and because of his generosity and good time we had, I have offered a 2nd trip to him come Fall if he chooses. He wanted to shorten the learning curve on the planer board method, so I hope I helped him achieve that.

Ron & Herman met me at Hunters Point where I was a tad late, but found they were in good company with George when I arrived. As some of you know the bite on Mille Lacs has slowed down some from its torrid pace of May and early June, but we still found some active fish. We were met with some calm, foggy, buggy, and humid conditions to start the day with another bug hatch happening the night before. The school we chose to work right away was a school I have been taking some bigger fish from, but just did not want anything to do with us. So we moved to another school and after some coaxing with the fog lifting, we finally started to boat some fish and soon had our first double of 3 for the day. It was either feast or fathom for us. I think on each of the doubles, Ron was up and would jump on the first board and Herms would pull through and spot the other board jumping in the water, while Ron was cranking his board in. We had some good stretches where we would boat a few fish and then go without for a long stretch, before coming across another active bunch and circling this school until moving on again. We worked for all of our fish and ground it out to put in the neighborhood of 16-20 fish in the boat. Not to bad, but definitely off the pace of previous weeks. Size was also lacking this day as we caught fish from 20.5” up to just under 27”. Don’t get me wrong we had plenty of really nice 25” fish come to the boat, but just not the size I was used to seeing. However, having these 2 guys in my boat was a pleasure as we sat and BS’ed all day about fishing, hunting and getting married.

I went back to my big fish spot numerous times through out the day, but just could not get them to go. However, what I did find was the areas that did not have a ton of bugs and baitfish around, these fish were more active and could be coaxed into biting. So instead of looking for the big pods of bugs and baitfish like I have all Summer, I looked for smaller bathes to concentrate our time on. The only real color we could actually figure out they had a liking for was Blue/Chrome #11 Tail Dancers. The speed we seemed to get bit at was right at 2 mph, with even a few fish coming off the inside turn. We endured a few real nasty looking storms that just seemed to skirt around the lake and as the day wore on it got nicer & nicer and the bugs disappeared (THANK GOD).

Well, we ended the day at Hunters with a quick burger and talked about the day. I’m looking forward to getting these 2 out in my boat again come Fall. This may be my last Planer board report of the Summer, but I just want to thank Ron & Herman for a great day in the boat, even though the fishing was not spectacular, the company was. I would also like to thank Ron (SLACK) for his generosity towards the BRF and to all the others who donated their time, money, and/or merchandise to help out with such a great cause. I’m not sure when I will be back on the water as I have some wedding and house stuff to take care of here the next few weeks, but I hope it is soon.

Until next time, be safe.

*CLICK ON PICTURES TO ENLARGE*