Mille Lacs Lake, MN – Smallies and Night ‘eyes!

Greetings from the big lake!

I’m on Mille Lacs Lake for my first run of fall night trips and had the pleasure of doing some fishing with Tom -Blue Fleck- Donaldson as I hunted around for the best walleye bite to be found as I prepared for up-coming guide trips. Tom is also a diehard bass guy and I promised him we’d spend a bunch of time during the day tapping into the great smallmouth bass fishery available… and the action and size of fish caught left us both grinning from ear to ear!

In fact, the majority of this report will focus on the bass bite as it is COMPLETELY awesome right now due to these warm temps and stable conditions we’ve been experiencing.

We started out targeting shallow rock reefs and rocky shorelines throwing all kinds of different plastics… tubes, worms, craws… you name it we fished it. But we were NOT catching much of anything to speak of. In fact, fishing was quite slow going. Until we started throwing large top-water that is! After that, our time spent fishing smallies was an absolute riot as we were able to put together a pattern that put us on fish where ever we went as long as we could find the right habitat.

Here’s what was working… any shallow rock / boulders that rose just just below the surface of the water, unrelated to the shoreline, held numbers of nice bass. We did not catch a single bass off shoreline rock or exposed rocks along islands all weekend. We had to target reefs that came to just below the surface and we would cast over and past these shallow boulder piles and work our top water chuggers back over the top of the piles. Time after time the awesome fish, many in the 2.75 – 4.5 Lb range, would wait until the bait over the shallowest part of the reef before exploding on the bait! Several times we had to fight fish back out of water so shallow the fish had to fight on it’s side as we worked them back to the boat!

These fish were very aggressive with the fish coming completely out of the water with the bait in its mouth and action at times was as fast as you could go. At one point on Sunday evening Tom and I each made 6 – 8 casts in a row that resulted in either a vicious strike or a fish in the boat.

With the warmer temps forecast I would expect this bite to continue for some time now. If top water smallies are your thing, get here now! I’ve enjoyed some fun top water action on the river but the size of the fish available on Mille Lacs right now is something special.

During our time spend inspecting reefs we found huge numbers of 3 – 5 inch perch roaming or huddled in any depression to be found on top of these reefs. The numbers are massive and the smallies and other predators are right there after them.

The weather was very calm so sight fishing was possible. We saw some truly impressive smallmouth but also an eye-popping number of huge muskie and pike. All the rocks from Sherman’s Pt. south to Rocky Reef had large numbers of muskie finning around on top of them and early on in the day on Sunday I had a musky follow my top water to the boat that literally made my knees shake! We had been seeing low – mid 40 inch fish prior to that but this fish was something special. I remember telling Fleck to run to the front of the boat to check out this particular fish with a head as big around as a 5 quart ice cream pail! I would have loved to have hooked this fish but there’s no doubt I would have been in a futile struggle given how under-powered my equipment was. For all you musky and pike fisherman… look to the shallow rocks!

Now about the night walleye bite…!

Saturday night Fleck and I spent about an hour sweating like pigs in the boat… after dark! The humidity was terrible and the bite was non-existent. We pulled the pin on our night chasing walleyes and headed back to the cabin to rest up for Sunday. The water temps were 72 degrees and there was a large number of bugs hanging on every part of the boat making the experience less than enjoyable.

Sunday night the temps were much lower and the humidity a non-factor. A light wind was blowing up out of the south which helped keep the bugs down and we hit the rocks on the east side of the lake. Fishing was slow for the first hour but gradually picked up pace throughout the evening. We found our best bite in 4 – 5 foot of water around and over the tops of the shallow reefs on the east side of the lake, no doubt these fish are gorging on the large numbers of perch we saw earlier in the day in these same locations.

We ended up boating about 6 – 8 fish an hour throughout the night and the size ran from 20 – 24 inches or so for the majority caught. All fish caught are plump beyond description.

Our best baits for the night were the #5 jointed raps, fished on short lines, or the #12 husky jerks in just about every color we threw at them.

Trolling speeds ranged from 1.2 – 1.7 and the fish smacked the baits with gusto. I look for the night bite to go from average like it is now to good over the next couple nights if we can get some wind to work with. Conditions have been very calm at night and a nice chop would likely improve the size of fish being caught in my opinion.

Well, for those that are familiar with in-depthangling.com, you know I put up a Mille Lacs report of this type every second day so look for my next offering on Wednesday of this week. Last night there were 2 boats out after dark that I could see so boat pressure is VERY low right now. Looking to get out after dark and have the lake to yourself while the weather’s still plenty warm? Head to the pond…!