Mille Lacs Lake, MN Walleye report 8-4-08

Hello “The Dog Days of Summer”…….We all look at the calendar and see that it now reads August? Where did our summer go? This pattern never took off, I never had the opportunity to try this method that I read in a post on IDO!! Summer just happen’s to fly by without allowing us the time to enjoy it sometimes. The past few weeks the fishing on Mille Lacs Lake has needed to fly by and allow us to move on into some more productive fishing. These past few weeks the bite on the lake has been a difficult one to say the least. Whether your at fellowship in church drinking coffee, leaning on Formica flats enjoying a cold one whatever or wherever it’s the same old conversation………holy smokes the fishing is tough!!!!

Well I’m hoping that as we move into the month of August we see the shallow fish in the rock areas to take off. We need a change as the deep mud fish are there but are enjoying the abundance of bait that this area has been offering up on the buffet line!!! Bug hatch after bug hatch…..they just keep coming. I’m really sick of washing off the siding on the house and cleaning them off the boat!! Bring on the shallow late summer walleye bite!!!

As for what has been working for this old boy…..has been this. Trolling, trolling and more trolling! Pulling leadcore with crank baits has been the method that has put a “few fish” in the boat. Many anglers are talking about trips without any success….”getting skunked”. That ready hurts, but does happen during this time frame. You really need to put something in front of the walleye that they just can not turn down. Kind of like a big rack of rib’s that George Nitti Hunters Point Resort owner has just prepared on the grill!!! Ya just gota eat it!!! well putting a Berkley Frency Shad on the end of my line has been that bait the last few trips!! I have just about worn out some clips changing baits. Looking for the one that might make the difference. I think that the rattling noise that they create offer’s something more than the others don’t. Pulling them on leadcore off the mud flats has been the only thing that has worked as of late. I have been trolling the basin areas around the mid lake flats. Looking for bait and fish……nether are hard to find….getting the fish to bite is the hard one!

I had the recent pleasure of fishing with the owner of B-Fish-N Tackle Dave Koonce this past week. We did manage to boat a few fish in the protected slot on Mille Lacs. The smaller fish under the protected slot are difficult to find…….although I did see one floating dead in the water the other day! Its really bad when ya get excited about something like that! But that’s fishing…….I would predict that we will see more people starting to fish closer to shore, targeting the rocky reefs soon. Once we do that we will see more of the smaller fish caught once again. Until than………enjoy pulling in the big ones for a quick photo and release!!! get them back in the water to swim another day.