Open basin trolling report – Mille Lacs Lake, MN

Now is the time to get out on Mille Lacs and try open basin trolling! Joining me on this trip was a couple of work associates of mine (Mike Kaveney and Steve Faith from Microsoft) and a client of ours (Jay Drayton from Lifetouch). We’ve been planning this trip for over a month and we finally were able to coordinate our calendars and make it happen! Shortly after 6am, we left the twin cities and headed towards the pond. When we arrived around 8am, I was pleasantly pleased to see a clear blue sky with very light winds! This would be the first time all year that I would be fishing out there in less than 2 footers!

I had not been on the water for 10 days and a lot can happen between now and then. Typically I can work an area of active fish for a week or two until it fizzles out. We motored 4 miles out to a spot where I had success the last time out. As soon as I motored down, we started marking suspended baitfish along with some arcs. We quickly put out our lines and our anticipation was high. One hour later and a mile into our first troll run we had nothing to show for it. It certainly wasn’t because we weren’t marking any good sign – the problem was that there was too much sign and there was so much baitfish in this area that we simply could not compete down there! Imagine your crankbaint amongst hundreds of tullibees! That’s exactly what we were encountering and we had to relocate to another spot where there wasn’t so much bait but yet some suspended arcs.

Thanks to a tip from fellow IDO Field Staffer – Ted Merdan, we motored to a different location where Ted and Chris Tuckner had some success the day before. This was a good move and before we knew it, the drag on the leadcore reel went screaming and we had our first suspended walleye in the boat taping out at 27 inches (Deep Tail Dancer #11, purpledescent)! Thanks Ted! The next hour was fast and furious with 5 more suspended walleyes finding the net all caught on TDD#11s – bleeding tiger, flash perch and purpledescent. All four rods (two leadcore set ups and two planer board setups) had caught at least one walleye and now it was time to get really focused!

However, what I didn’t expect was for the wind to pick up and change directions on us. Experience tells me this is not a good thing. I believe the reason why fishing slows down is that the baitfish and the tullibees seem to scatter more when this happens and they don’t school up as much. This has a ripple effect and the walleyes have the tendency to do the same thing. We caught a couple of more fish but it was not what I was hoping to finish out the day. We called it a day around 3pm and headed for home due to some family commitments.

As promised, here’s this week’s open water trolling tip: One of the biggest mistakes that I see anglers make is setting the drag too tight when trolling crankbaits in the open water and especially when they are using braided and/or leadcore lines. Due to the no stretch, it’s extremely important that you set your drags as loose as possible when using planer boards. If you don’t, you will simply rip those hooks right out of the walleye’s mouth. After you hook up, you must then tighten down your drag a bit so you can gain on the fish but still allowing that drag to be pulled out just in case the fish dives on you. I also like to disengage the noise clicker on the reel as soon as possible. I feel the drag will work a little bit smoother without the friction of the clicker. Consistently check your drags to ensure they are properly set and then check them again!

All in all, it was still a great day on the water listening to the Sirius radio, having a couple of beers, grilling some venison brats, telling some fishing stories and catching a few suspended walleyes along the way! If you haven’t experienced the open basin trolling on Mille Lacs, now is the time to get out there. Feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions – I would be more than happy to help!