Mille Lacs Fall Trolling

After a bit of dry spell on reporting and fishing for that matter, I was able to get up to Mille Lacs for a little Fall trolling. The plan was to hit the north and west side by myself due to the high winds predicted until Jake H called me with a “boat in the water but left the key at home” scenario.
I enjoy fishing with others more than myself most of the time, so I was happy to pick up Jake and his buddy Brian from work. This was Brian’s first time out on Mille Lacs so we were hoping to get him into some fish before too long. It didn’t take long to put this big girl in the boat. Taped out at 27.5 if I remember.

Our plan was target rocks until the fish told us otherwise. With some good information from some friends, the rocks have been pretty consistently putting out fish. If you have a Lake Master chip, you’ll want to find areas of rock piles and scattered rock in 5-8 ft with anywhere from 9-13 ft adjacent to them. There are numerous areas on all the shoreline areas of Mille Lacs with similar structure so even if the wind dictates your shoreline, I’m confident you could put this pattern to use all over the lake. Here’s Jake with a nice fish that took a Husky Jerk

A few thoughts to keep in mind that made the difference for us. I don’t have a kicker so we started trolling and couldn’t keep our speed below 2mph. We didn’t put a fish in the boat until I threw out the wind sock off the bow and were consistently between 1.4-1.8mph. This is absolutely critical to putting fish in the boat. I watch guys go by us at 2.5 and even 3mph and you will not hook fish at this speed this late in the year bottom line. Be creative. Wind socks, 5 gallon buckets with ports drilled for water to flow through, and even the trolling motor put down and turned sideways help us guys without the resource to dial in our speeds. Here’s Brian’s big fish of the night that was 27 and hit a clown Husky Jerk.

Color for us was almost exclusively Clown #12 Husky Jerk. The moon was out in full force providing a lot of light which means that your chrome colors are going to be a good place to start. We heard reports of guys catching fish on Firetiger and even Lazer Craw Rogues, but I never switched all night and had plenty of fish bending my rod.
Also, the importance of “S” turns surfaced for us. make sure that your driver understands how to do this properly so that your baits that are on the inside turn are suspending for a bit. Often you will get whacked when your bait is in this zone so pay attention and see what the fish are telling you. Sometimes it’s “S” turns, others it’s rod pumps with pauses, and other times it’s straight ahead with the rods in the holders…you just never know.
At the end of the night it was the little details and “spot on spots” that made the difference and we were able to put close to 25 fish in the boat. Not an absolute slug fest by any means, but an enjoyable night on the water for sure. Good luck this weekend.