Anyone Opening Up Any Fish As of Late?

[Shack]

The best way to find out what food/bait one type of fish is feeding on right now, it to look inside during cleaning time. This will tell you what bait you should be using. This is one thing I have come to find in my years of fishing.

I would love to get up and try some fake or live frogs in the shallows. The walleyes (I have been told) feed naturally on them this time of year. Frogs (I think) are in shallows getting ready to burry them selves for winter. I think they are a little disoriented during this time of year. The walleyes know this and come in shallow to feast on them.

Anyone keeping any walleyes?

If so what are you finding in their bellies during cleaning time.

[Shack]

Come on guys, almost 400 hits to this thread and no one has anything to say!

Hatch, worms, crayfish, snakes, turtles anything?

Catch and release must be in full effect or the lake is very,very slow....

[Paul Waldowski]

The Walleye bite is pretty slow right now, couple that with the slot and not a lot of fish being cleaned right now.

[Shack]

Thanks Paul, thats what I figured.

Just razzing the troops!

[TRZ]

You really don't learn much from cleaning 15 inchers, i cleaned 3 last week and found a few baby perch and minnows. last year in the fall i cleaned a lot of 20-22 inchers and found alot of intersting things, large perch, crayfish from rock fish and even a bluegill which really surprised me. the 14-16 inch slot might as well be just a closed season because it is very hard to get fish in that size range and a 14 incher is hardly even worth keeping on mille lacs, i released a few 14.25 inchers last week they were skinny and propbably not even a pound.

[davesfriend]

It does seem difficult to throw back 17" and such. Maybe next year it will be better.

[uglystick007]

Caught a bunch of almost jumbo perch on leeches and some minnows. You could see the perch chasing small perch but they bit the leeches three times as fast as the minnows. Several of the perch were urpping up small perch minnows. Caught some under and over slot walleyes on leeches. I did observe a young shore fisherman catch a very nice midday walleye on a tube bait. I also observed a nice frog jumping around in the yard.

[TRZ]

How big was the frog?

[Shack]

Was the yard you speak of on Mille Lacs?

Thanks for the info guys, keep it coming!

[GoggleEye]

I think the slot is a good thing as it is going to make a lot of us very happy down the road. I would hate to see Mille Lacs fall victim to what most lakes fall to.......splurge in walleye population> anglers take as many as they can catch> walleye population dives> fishing is crap for the next ten years before it can recover again and the whole process starts over. How many lakes can you think of off the top of your head where you say to yourself "man that lake was really good fishing back in the day, we kept a lot of nice fish out of there....I wonder what happened to that lake". I don't mind only being able to keep a 14-16 inch fish out of ML, especially when I can go there and catch 15 fish over 20 inches in a day!! It's a walleye heaven to me! Tight lines to you all!

GoggleEye

[uglystick007]

It was a leopard frog on the lawn on Malone Island.

[TRZ]

Those are really pretty frogs, was it a big one?