The bite on Mille Lacs continues to be excellent. This week I was on the water Wednesday through Friday for the 1st Annual Hunter’s Point Walleye Extravaganza. I teamed up with IDO Member Dan Pfeifer (BigFife), for this one. Wednesday was our only pre-fish day so we decided to fish in our own boats and each cover a bunch of different mudflats. During the MWC, last week Nate Gilkey (GrainBeltEyes) and I only fished mud the entire week. The flats held good numbers of prime slot fish and plenty of big ones, so I figured that would still be the case this week. On Tuesday night, we mapped out the spots we’d each try so off we went on Wednesday. Dan had good action in the morning and my spots produced better in the afternoon, so that made it easy to develop a game plan for Day 1.
On Thursday, we hit Dan’s best 3 or 4 spots first. As we pulled up on the first spot we started marking pods of fish every 50-100 yards. We marked a waypoint on each pod, then setup a backtrolling run zig zagging back over the flat to the pods of fish. Every time we approached a pod we’d get a bite or even a double. In the first 15 minutes, we already had 2 good 16 inch slots in the well so we hoped it would be a good day. We set a 16 inch or better minimum until noon, so we continued on spot #1 for the next hour and a half. We probably boated 15 fish there, with many slots under 16 inches. By 9AM, the action was slowing down, so we decided to head to another spot.
The rest of the day was pretty much the same. We hit a bunch of spots catching fish on most. Once noon rolled around we had 4 in the box, then changed our slot minimum to 15 inches. We got 1 more 15 incher, then hit spot #6 at 2 PM. After about 45 minutes catching several over 17”, we caught two 14 inchers and boxed them as we only had an hour to go. Then we decided to end the day on that spot and boxed another 14 incher for our 8th fish shortly before it was time to go. At least we had a limit and gave ourselves a chance for Day 2. Our Day 1 basket was a 7 fish limit for 7.44 pounds which put us in 26th place out of 64 teams.
On Day 2, we deployed the same game plan as Day 1. The morning was good as we had 4 good slots pulling spinners in the first couple of hours. After that spot died, we went to another. Cruising up the flat we marked a few pods on 2 different stretches and kept circling back over them.
At about 10:30, I got one I figured was a mid 20’s fish, so I told Dan to keep fishing and I’d let him know when it got close for the net. After it got to the surface, I noticed it looked significantly longer than most. As Dan laid it out in the Judge I thought it had a chance and sure enough, the tail just crossed the 29 inch mark! Now we were back in the game, so the goal was to at least get some quality slots the rest of the day to give us a chance for the win. By 12:30, we had 3 more over 16 inch slots in the box, so in we went. We contemplated not keeping one so we could try for another big one and really seal the deal, but in my years of Mille Lacs Tournament fishing I’ve rarely seen a team get 2 over 28, so in we went.
We ended up with 21.65 pounds which was good for 3rd place, as the top 2 teams edged us by about a pound. I’d like congratulate Dale and Bob Luoma who won with 22.85 pounds and 2nd place finishers Mylo Leistkio and Jason Youngquist who just missed winning the tournament with 22.64 pounds. Great job guys! We had big fish for the tournament, but they had the slots dialed in a little better than us. I’d also like to thank Hunter’s Point Resort and the MTT Staff who ran a great tournament. The meal on Thursday night was some of the best Prime Rib I’ve ever had! The full tournament results can be found on the Hunter’s Point Website or by this link:
http://www.hunterspointresort.com/Events.html
As for tactics, we’ve used Jolly Roger Tackle 100% the last 2 weeks in both the MWC and Hunters Extravaganza. 95% of the time was spent pulling 10 foot Jolly Roger Harnesses with Baby Walleye, Seyka Perch, Pink Scale, Firetiger and Clown as the best colors this week. We’ve also been running a mix of air injected crawlers and Rainbow Chubs for bait. For the Minnows, we just clip the 2nd hook and hook the minnow through the mouth. At times, it doesn’t seem to matter, but other times, Minnows outperformed crawlers and vice versa. Blade size didn’t seem to matter. I usually run #3 blades on Mille Lacs, but during the last 2 weeks we tried #4 and #5 blades for bigger fish and still caught good slots on them as well. 5% of the time was spent leadcore trolling with a few of the prototype Jolly Roger Custom Shad Raps that will be online in the next couple of weeks. The leadcore/shad rap program produced some great fish at times, but hasn’t quite heated up yet as spinners are dominating right now, but it will take off here as summer progresses.
I’ll be off the water for awhile now as it’s my daughter Layla’s 5th birthday next weekend but will back after that so I’ll post a report in a couple weeks when I return to the water.
Best of Fishing,
Shawn Flemming
Jolly Roger Tackle