Mille Lacs Lake Open Basin Trolling Report

The open basin trolling bite continues to produce big fish. If you are willing to do your homework and practice persistency and patience, you will eventually be rewarded.

I’ve been extremely busy the last couple of months fine tuning my bow, hanging deer stands, checking trail cameras as I prepare for the upcoming deer hunting season. It has certainly hindered my chances of spending time on my favorite body of water. That all changed this week and I was able to sneak a day of fishing in with my wife – Tina and her boss – Mike.

We hit the water around noon and it was a picture perfect day on the water with temps in the low 70’s and light winds coming out of the south. You could just feel that we were going to have a good day.

We motored out to the open basin and started to scout for suspended walleyes. This year I upgraded to a Humminbird 1197 and I really like the side imaging feature. This is a great scouting tool and allows me to scan a lot of water in a short period of time. After checking out a couple of areas, I finally liked what I saw on the sonar and we put out our deep diving crankbaits along with planer boards and waited for the action. As my sonar lit up with more baitfish and arcs my confidence grew and it didn’t take us long to hook up with our first fish.

This year I would have to admit that the size of the fish that I’ve been catching has been averaging more on the smaller size. Over the years, at typical open basin fish would be anywhere from 22-27 inches. This year I’ve caught a lot of fish in the 18-22 inch range and even a few smaller ones below the slot limit (two on this day). I’m not sure the reason for this and please enlighten me if you have an opinion.

Our fishing was pretty consistent and we averaged a couple of fish for every hour that we were out there. Big fish of the day was a very healthy and chunky 27 incher! Tina “big fish girl” showed Mike how it was done after Mike had a couple that got off near the boat. “Hot Crank” of the day was a #11 Deep Tail Dancer – Flash Perch trolled 120 feet back on a planer board trolled at 2.0 m.p.h.

Usually by this time of the year, I wind down on the open basin trolling due to the fact many of the walleyes head in towards the shoreline and adjacent structure. However this year is different due to the late start in the spring and I marked a ton of fish out there still and was really impressed with the sign on my sonar. Long story short, get out there and try it! It’s really not that hard to figure out once you locate them. If you have any questions or would like more info., just send me a PM and I would be a happy to help. That’s what IDO is all about. Anglers helping anglers to become better anglers!

Soon the day of fishing came to an end, the sun dipped below the horizon and we started to make our way back to the landing. As we motored across the big lake, I started to think about all of the wonderful memories that I’ve been able to experience on this incredible body of water. It’s so easy to take that for granted. I thought about some of the people that I took on Mille Lacs for the very first time and relived the smiles on their faces when they caught their first Mille Lacs walleye. I thought about all the friends that I’ve been fortunate enough to meet who fish Mille Lacs as well. And lastly I thought about how the power of fishing bring together family and friends and how it builds lifelong memories. To me… that’s what fishing is really about.

Good luck and I wish you many fishing memories as well.