Mille Lacs Walleye Bobber Bite

As I hit the water yesterday about 8:00am I was greeted with a nice walleye chop and it looked like it was going to be a great day. I was guiding a great group of guys out of McQuoids Inn on Mille Lacs in Isle, MN.

I decide to start the morning on a shallow gravel flat that’s been kicking out some good eater size fish for me. My presentation of choice was bobber fishing with a nice lively leech. The hardest part about bobber fishing is staying on the fish, so mobility is the key to success. When I’m hiting a new area I usually cross hatch the area with my Lowrance electronics to find out where the fish are holding; on the top, side, or bottom? Once the fish are locatated it’s as simple as getting the rig in front of em and keeping it there.

On this first flat I found the fish to be on the top side about 18FOW. I set the corks about a foot off bottom and it didn’t take long to have the first 16" walleye in the boat. We picked up another eater on this spot along with a couple 21" fish that needed to be released. The fish in this area disapated after a while so I made the move to a deeper gravel hump in about 26FOW. On this flat I found the fish to be holding up on the windy side of the flat in great numbers so we reset the corks and it was game on. We boated a large number of fish ranging from too small, to a number of very fat 17" fish that went in the box, along with a number of overs in the 20"-23" range. I think for the morning we boated around 20 fish. For lunch we headed into Buzzies for some of the best burgers on the lake!

After lunch our nice walleye chop had turned into glass and my clients wanted a chance at some true Mille Lacs walleyes so we headed out to a large mudflat. After 10-15 minutes of driving around I located a small school on the north side of the flat. These fish were suspended over 32FOW in the mayfly hatch about 5 feet off bottom. I set the corks accordingly and the first fish didn’t take but 5 minutes. It was a very plump 26" eye. Over the next two hours we continued to pick up some very nice fish ranging in length from 25"-28 1/4". It wasn’t fish after fish but everyone was picture worthy. They were all very fat and healthy. Even though the fish were still going my new friends needed to hit the road so we reeled up our lines and headed in. It was a great day and we were very thankful that ugly weather that ripped across the state held out long enough to get in a full day of memories. The bite is definatly ON, so get the family or some of your buddies together and get on up here for some great action!