Mille Lacs Lake Post Front Walleyes 7.13.08

Well, it had been exactly a month to the day since the last time I shared some time on the water with my brother Rich. This past Sunday Rich and I headed up to Mille Lacs even though we knew it was going to blow hard, and blow it did. Read on to see how we got some nice big fish to come to the boat, even after a nasty front moved through the area two nights prior. It has been a real busy Summer for me and it had been two weeks since I have been on the water. I just could not wait another week or two, so windy or not I was going fishing.

So the plan of attack was to rig a gravel to mud transition with leeches and then head out to the flats to pull some boards. After some GPS puck issues, we hit the water just before noon and checked a mud/gravel transition with the help of my Lake Master chip as I located this particular area while sitting in my garage the night before. We went out to this pre scouted area and searched the area that looked good on the map the night before. I immediately knew our home work paid off as it looked awfully good as my Lowrance lit up with fish on the bottom as shown here in the 2nd picture. We found the fish holding just above the transition in about 23-25 feet of water with the transition occurring in about 25-27 feet. The sonar pretty much looked liked the picture as long as we stayed in the target depth along this whole transition line. With the strong North wind we made a run up top and planned to drift down the edge of this transition and stay in the at 22-26 foot depth. As I knew from the lack of talk here on IDO, the bite has been tough. So I wanted to keep our baits in the bite zone 100% of the time and wanted to make sure I went as slow as possible. With the wind humming like it was, we ended up throwing both of my Drift Control Magnum Sea Anchors out and I believe this was the key of getting the bites we did. This allowed us to creep along just above the transition and maintain that very slow pace, to keep our leech rigs in front of these some what tight lipped wary fish just long enough to coax them into committing into biting.

With a little adjustment after our first drift with no bites, we started to get into the fish both on the sonar and in the boat. Not being able to even hear yourself think or talk over the wind, it was difficult to hear Rich on the other end of the boat as he again said something?? However, this time it did not take me long to figure out what he said as I watched him start to feed out line. As I’m watching him, I suddenly feel that old familiar tug on my ol’ blue St Croix rod. Now this turned into not being just a tug. This was more like a purse snatching in New York as this fish started to peel off line. As I flipped my bail over, I looked over at Rich as we both simultaneously set the hook into the two fish shown in the first picture. Rich had the privilege of holding them for the picture since he got the bigger one. The fish did not show a favor over a red or chanteuse hook both with glow beads, however they did want a longer snell as by the end both of us had 10 footers on. After bringing five fish to the boat it was getting late in the day and I still wanted to make a couple trolling passes. Yet I knew it would take a little longer to get out and check on the school of fish I wanted to, since it was 9 miles away in some pretty big waves.

When we arrived out to our school of fish we observed what we had figured. With the nasty weather Friday night and the front that had moved through we found this school of fish with their bellies tight to the bottom and a lil’ scattered. I decided to try running two different size cranks and set up running a #9 and a #11 Deep Tail Dancer. We sorted through a few colors, but again the purple tail dancer brought all four fish to the boat for us. The size did not seem to matter as both sizes got two fish each. However, what did seem to matter was how deep we ran these cranks and how these baits were presented. All these fish were taken with baits 2-4 feet off the bottom. The speed that seemed to trigger these fish were 1.5-1.8 mph, but more importantly was all these fish were taken off a rod that did not have a planer board attached to them. When it gets real rough and wavy like it was yesterday, I usually try to run one line at least with out a planer board and let the fish dictate what they want to see. After the first two fish came to the boat with out a planer board, it was apparent that these post front fish were not keen on the baits being real active with the surging of the boards from the monster waves. So we switched up the other rod and ran both set ups straight out the back with no planer boards. We did miss two fish on planer boards that bit and somehow finagled there way off before making it boats side. By the end of the day we had both rods straight out the back running purple deep tail dancers with one #9 and a #11. With the clock passing the 5:30 pm mark we started to talk about leaving as mid July rolls around both of our minds start to focus on our main passion of bow hunting. We talked about making it back in time to get some shooting in before dark. Well it did not take long because @ 5:45 pm we reeled them in and started our 9 mile run back to the landing. Our day was a bit shorter due to some GPS antenna issues but it turned out to be a decent day as we landed some dandy fish, fished two different presentations and I shared some time in the boat with one of my best friends talking about this Fall and whacking a monster or two. Until next time, be safe and try to make sure we get those kids out on the water and enjoy this great sport of fishing.

*CLICK ON PICTURES TO ENLARGE*