Mille Lacs First Ice Walleye

This weekend I officially kicked off the guiding season on Mille Lacs. Saturday was my first day on the big lake and as the events unfolded for the day, I was quickly reminded why I love this lake so much. The fishing was excellent, the weather cooperated and I got to enjoy a lot of laughs with friends and family. Our goal for this weekend was to film an upcoming TV show for In-depth Outdoors and I think we succeeded in putting together a show that tops any other we have done to date.

James Holst and I hit the ice at 6:00 AM on Saturday and headed out to my first spot, one that has produced big fish over the years. After a few missed opportunities on tip-ups, a couple small fish and one “Big One” that got away, we decided we missed the early bite by getting set-up to late. We decided we would stick it out on this spot though, as we marked a ton of nice fish when we were setting tip-ups. One thing that I did note was the unbelievable amount of young perch. In past years when we had this much bait, the fishing was always tougher, but the fish were usually very fat. Both proved to be true this weekend.

Sticking to our original game plan ended up being a good call. By targeting this particular weed/mud transition we were able to get some of those big females coming in to feed on those perch to go. Almost all of the fish we caught were over the 20-inch slot. The majority of the big fish seemed to be in that 25-26 inch range with a couple that would have touched the 27-inch line. Over the weekend we were joined by several people who volunteered their time to help out with the TV project. A special thanks to my dad Gary, his wife Judith and Jay “stickboy” Schuur from IDA for all their help.

The conditions on Mille Lacs are tough right now. There is anywhere from 5-12 inches of ice depending on the spot. There is about a foot of snow on the ice, and more in some spots. The spots that have more snow have lots of slush, which makes travel tough. We are not making ice right now with that snow cover, so be very careful out there. We used a snowmobile to get around and that worked fine, but it was kind of tough going for the guys on ATV’s.

Now, back to the fishing. We were targeting a shallow break, fishing anywhere from 13-19 feet of water. The fish were feeding aggressively in the shallows in low light and would slide out to deeper water during the day. We spent most of our time targeting the shallow fish, as our goal was to put some nicer fish on the ice, like this dandy 26-incher my dad caught on a Red Glow Demon Jigging spoon from Custom Jigs and Spins. I used a combination of the Demon Jigging Spoons, Go Devils and Lightnin Spoons, all of which took nice fish.

I don’t want to ruin the show for anyone. The show will be airing on January 6th 2008 on FSN so be sure to check out all the action. We cover all the techniques we used to catch these Mille Lacs Lake monsters as well as have some unbelievable underwater footage captured from MarCum’s new 825C color underwater camera. Be sure to check out the show and we’ll see you on the lake!