Mille Lacs Fall Trolling in August????

Well, after dusting out the cobwebs from my boat and getting her ready to hit the Fall trolling run, I decided to hit the water Friday night with some good buddies. Hearing that water temps were in the 60’s and with the Full Moon early last week, I thought what better time to start then the present. I called up Chris, Jason and Torre and we made a mad dash up there after work on Friday. It had been darn almost 2 months since I fished for Walleyes up there. We made it to our SE rock reef right after dark and was a bit surprised to find out we did not have any competition. I also found water temps just hovering below 70 degrees as the hot sunny day probably jumped up the temps. Read the rest of the report to see how our night went.

Well it started out a little slow, until that moon rose around 9:30. Then we soon figured out the speed and pattern. Then it was some steady action, not a torrid pace but steady. There was no doubt that they had a preference of bait and color. Good & True ol’ Husky Jerk #12 in Firetiger was what they wanted. The first fish to the boat was not a whopper by any means, but it was good to see a walleye none the less as Jason pulled it in with out a net. Once the ice was broken, the fish seemed to come a little more easy. Next it was my turn as I was ripping my modified clown bent lip shad through a rock hump when bam, I felt that ol’ familiar feeling of my trolling rod getting whacked. In came a very scrappy 19.5” eye that had me pretty excited. It was pretty consistent action form there on out as I had figured out they were favoring a certain side of the reef and mainly biting off 2-3 rock humps. This enabled us to stay off the dead (non biting) part of the reef and stay in productive waters. The first “ROUGH FISH” of the Fall trolling year came to the boat after Chris had a great battle with a 18.25” Smallie that got air borne a few times and was determined not to touch the net. This was Chris’s first Mille Lacs Smallie and largest one to date. Congrats Chris.

We worked a SE rock reef staying in 4-10 feet of water, concentrating on the little rock bumps or little reefs on top of the reef (spot on the spot). This seemed to be key, when you start hitting bottom with your crank hold on and BOOM, fish on. The usual S turns were thrown in and there was not a definite pattern as inside or outside rod but the boat speed of around 2.2 mph seemed to be the ticket. The hot bait of the night was Firetiger HJ 12 and the HOT STICK of the evening was Jason who started with FT and stuck with FT. The size of the fish was lacking but this is normal for me being this early. On this particular reef early in the year like it is, I rarely see any thing with "Great"size. That will soon change when the water temps dip into the 50’s and the BIG GIRLS start showing up.

We ended up fishing from 9pm until almost 1:30am. The best action was in the middle of that time as the moon was rising. By the end of the night we ended up boating 15 walleyes, 1 Smallie and 1 rock bass. Like I mentioned earlier, the size was lacking, but it was just great to be out trolling cranks in the shallows again. We ended up with 2 under the14-16” slot and the rest were overs, with a handful of them just under or breaking the 20” mark. I think the largest one came in just shy of 23”, on a FireTiger and by Jason of course. The closest slot we had was one that went 16.25”. We started the night on a terrific August evening and ended the night enjoying a new begining as September hit and just one of many trolling runs to come this Fall. YEP, IT IS THAT TIME.

UNTIL NEXT TIME, LIP is outie!

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