In the last two weeks, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on both Mille Lacs and Winnibigosh. 2 weeks ago I was on Mille Lacs fishing with a co-worker of mine, Rollie Yager and his wife Deb. Last year at work, I donated a day of Mille Lacs fishing for our United Way Silent Auction Fundraiser and Rollie was the highest bidder (thanks Rollie!). We set July 16th as the date for the trip and my goal was to put Rollie and Deb on some big Mille Lacs Walleyes so we headed out to some of my favorite mudflats. On our 1st spot of the day, I didn’t even put the boat in gear yet to start our backtroll, when Rollie said “fish on” and in the boat came a nice fat 24 incher. Rollie and Deb had a little wager going so Rollie won for 1st fish. About 10 minutes later, Deb latched into one and thought she was snagged, however "snags don’t usually fight back” I told her! After a 5 minute battle, Deb hauled in her biggest walleye ever, a 27.5” whopper. Now Deb was in the lead for biggest fish!
We proceeded to have steady action all day even though it was very hot with no wind. We pulled spinners with air injected crawlers all day and ended up catching around 30 fish. We even managed 4 slot fish for the Yagers to take home and enjoy a fresh walleye dinner. Deb put on a clinic all day and ended up winning the bet for most fish and Rollie won for first and biggest as he hauled in a 27.75 incher right before we were going to call it a day! Both Deb and Rollie caught their personal best walleyes and it was a lot of fun to help them do it.
Jolly Roger Pro Series Firebelly and Sunrise Craw blades have been the ticket for us all summer on Mille Lacs and they continued to be hot on this trip as well. We also had great luck on Purple Minnow and Baby Walleye when we felt the need to mix it up.
Last week, I took a couple days off and fished Winnibigosh. It’s been several years since I’ve been there in the middle of summer and I was looking forward to fishing all the different structure the lake has to offer. The fishing wasn’t as fast and furious for me as it’s been on Mille Lacs. I had to work for the fish, but managed to get between 6-12 each day fishing by myself on numerous mid-lake humps and deploying a combination of spinners and rigs. Most were in that nice 16-16.75” slot range. No monsters, but did get a few in the 23-24 inch range.
My buddy Al Elleraas and I decided to fish the Minnesota Tournament Trail (MTT) Event on Sunday as he couldn’t make it up until Saturday night. We wanted to fish the 2 Day Mille Lacs event in August and you need to fish at least one 1 Day event to be eligible, so I went and signed us up. The MTT is a fantastic, well run circuit and it was a great time. We managed to weigh 4 slot fish to finish in the middle of the pack. If a few just over 17’s were a fingernail width shorter we would have been in good shape, but that’s been my tournament trend this year (Winnie has a protected slot of 17"-26"). I was a bit worried as we didn’t even have a fish in the box at noon, but we stormed back from 1PM-3PM and caught a good dozen fish by working Firebelly spinners along a key spot on a southern bar. My excuse is that we just ran out of time as we were catching them right up to the point we had to head in! We had alot of fun and can’t wait for the Mille Lacs event on August 21-22…especially since the slot changed to under 20”! This was my first MTT Event and I plan on fishing many of them next year as it’s just a top notch organization with a great group of anglers who fish it.
Best of Fishing,
Shawn Flemming
Jolly Roger Tackle