Mille Lacs Lake Walleye

It’s been a while since we got a report up because they started to sound like a broken record, slow but steady with a few big fish per day. However, up until this last cold spell that’s how our fishing has been. The weather that moved through this weekend made Mille Lacs fishing tough. My guide clients

and I caught some nice fish on Friday and one more on Saturday morning before we packed things up and hit the road to Winnie. (I’ll cover our last few outings on Winnie in another report.) The guys staying in the sleeper house caught one early on Friday, but were only able to watch them swim though on Saturday and Sunday.

Glow colors have always been a big part of our presentation on Mille Lacs. The Glow Devils with a fathead are still producing fish, but more fish have been coming off of deadsticks, rattle wheels or tip-ups. When using a set-line don’t be afraid to use big bait. Scott makes special trips for us to get large shiners. If you purchase large shiners around the lake be prepared to pay a dollar for each minnow. I would suggest looking locally to see if you can find them at a good price.

Many of the areas that have been producing fish previous years haven’t been producing this year. We have been working new areas searching for more active fish. We start off with the green glow, red glow, or firetiger Glow Devils tipped with fatheads and our Marcum LX-3 flashers. Moving to a new area may involve punching many holes, but when you catch one, you know there are more willing to be caught. If you have a fish staring at your presentation, but can’t get it to bite, you only have a limited amount of

time to convince it to bite. If it won’t bite on a whole minnow and different jigging techniques I will either try pinching off the body or I will try a different color spoon.

Once we catch a fish or we mark enough fish to convince us to work the area more thoroughly, we will set up some tip-ups and wait them out. I normally move around a lot searching for active fish, but as the season progresses, patience pays off. I caught the fish in the last photo while I was out by myself. The fish are obviously having no problem finding food.