Mille Lacs Labor Day Weekend Fishing Report

The walleyes in the open water basin are still out there and some of them are willing to hit on #11 deep tail dancers. Tina and I were able to get out Thurs. night for few hours of trolling. The evening was perfect with light winds and a temperature around 70 degrees. After we motored out 6 miles from the landing, we set up our lines and hoped for the best. About 45 minutes into our first troll run, we got a hook up on a lead core set up with a silver flash deep tail dancer. Tina quickly boated our first suspended fish of the evening – a 26 incher. About a half hour later, we picked up another one on a planer board set up with a purpledescent deep tail dancer and that fish measured out at 25 inches. Another half hour later, we picked up our 3rd fish on the lead core set up. This one was only a 20 incher. And just like clockwork, one half hour later we picked up our 4th fish – another 26 incher on the planer board set up.

We were feeling pretty good having caught 4 fish in about 2.5 hours. My boat is typically averaging about a fish an hour lately and we were ahead of that pace. That was the good news. The bad news was we did not catch another fish over the next couple of hours. However, it really didn’t matter because it was more about spending time together. We had a really relaxing night and the sunset was beautiful. That night we made the short drive to my father’s hunting land and stayed in his new log cabin. It was the first time either one of us had seen it. It didn’t have electricity or water yet – but we didn’t care. We blew up our air mattress and snuggled one another until we fell asleep.

I was back at it on Sunday and planned on hitting the water early. My old high school buddy Joe joined me and we were on the water fishing by 7:15am. The wind was blowing from the south (just like Thurs. night) so I was able to troll the exact same direction and could easily follow my previous troll lines. Our first two troll runs were fantastic and we went SEVEN for NINE (we lost one fish about half way to the boat and another one that did not get hooked properly). All fish were caught on lead core long lining set ups (silver flash and purpledescent colors). I was running these cranks pretty deep (26-28 feet) in 32 feet of water. I was using long 50’ mono leaders with another 105 feet of lead core. These fish were very thick and healthy ranging from 23.5 – 27 inches. It was now only 10:15 am and we had high expectations for the rest of the day.

Then it happened…. The wind slowly changed directions and was now blowing from the west. We tried to troll sideways against the waves but it was no use. We could no longer keep our same troll run as before nor could we maintain consistent speed. Our only choice was to troll with the waves in an easterly direction trying to intersect our previous troll runs at certain interval points. We finally got a hit on a silver flash set up – 135 feet back on a planer board but it quickly got off. We were pretty frustrated because it had been a long time since we had caught our last fish. I examined the deep tail dancer and everything looked OK including the sharp hooks. About 10 minutes later the exact same thing happened again. This fish just slammed the board and the loose drag squealed the way it was supposed to. Joe grabbed the rod right away and the fish was on for about 10 seconds and then somehow got off. Now we were really frustrated. We just lost two fish in a row and now our drought was over four hours long! We kept at it for another half hour or so but I finally called it quits on this “hot spot”. We decided to head over to another location about 2 miles away where I had some success about a month ago. The wind was now coming out of the north. It had done a 180 degree turn in about 5 hours.

As I was putting out a planer board set up, I was just about to put the rod in the holder when BANG – a fish slammed it right away. I looked at Joe and said – FISH ON! Joe was amazed and stated that we should of come over here a long time ago. This fish DID NOT get off and we finally boated our 8th walleye of the day – a 25 incher. It was now around 3:15 pm. Our spirits were raised once again but the bad part was we could only fish for another 45 minutes. We covered this spot pretty good but we could not get another one to go.

We ended the day 8 for 12 – very poor hook ratio but overall a pretty good day on the water. One interesting note – we saw a lot of weeds floating in the water and numerous times we had debris on our cranks. We were constantly checking our lines to make sure everything was clear.

It was good to see some people on the water Sunday! We saw about 8 boats fishing the mud flats. Anybody else have success???

Typically, over the years I stop trolling the open water basin on Labor Day weekend due to the fact the walleyes start their fall patterns moving towards the shallows. I was thinking that Sunday was most likely going to be my last trip this year. But…. now I’m thinking I just may have get up there ONE MORE TIME real early in the morning to find out if these fish will bite again!!!