mille lacs 2020 Mille Lacs Lake Fishing Reports

[Wanderer]

  On 1/8/2019 at 12:19 AM, FowlSki said:

 

I released two slots the one day I fished Mille lacs this winter.  Maybe I got lucky.  I have no desire to keep a walleye that big. 

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Well, they’re out there.  Seems like it depends a little on where you fish too.  I was suspicious of the slot size choice being one of the lower populated year classes in the lake; that was confirmed by the CO that checked us.  I prefer eating walleyes under 20 inches also.

 

  On 1/8/2019 at 12:56 AM, walros said:

I was up last weekend and did okay,15 fish one slot that we released. Anyone else noticing that there seem to be lots of 10-14" fish?  Nice to see another year class coming in.

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New Year’s weekend my buddy saw a lot of those.  We saw a couple in that year class.

[Parmer]

Heading out there this weekend... They have roads to the mud flats? Or sliver or midget? How much snow is on the lake... Bringing an wheel house. 

[Wanderer]

You might want to call ahead.  The flats are still sketchy for loading up wheelhouses.  Once they punch a road out, everyone flows down it even if told not to take their wheelhouses out past a certain point.  14 inches is the best for ice I’ve heard on the flats.

 

Plenty of fish on the break and rocks still.

Edited January 8, 2019 by Wanderer

[FowlSki]

  On 1/8/2019 at 12:56 AM, walros said:

I was up last weekend and did okay,15 fish one slot that we released. Anyone else noticing that there seem to be lots of 10-14" fish?  Nice to see another year class coming in.

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We got a bunch 10-12.  Good to see. I also noticed a ton of small perch every spot I fished.   Good to see the solid forage base.  

[walros]

Anyone catching tulibee's ?? Amy help would be appreciated, thinking of a day run saturday. Got one smoking now and would like more to smoke.

 

[leech~~]

Anyone getting any Jumbo's?  Something to make it worth a trip after my one Walleye! 

[FowlSki]

  On 1/10/2019 at 10:59 PM, walros said:

Anyone catching tulibee's ?? Amy help would be appreciated, thinking of a day run saturday. Got one smoking now and would like more to smoke.

 

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Plenty of tullies out on the edges of the mud flats.  They were hitting our walleye jigs with a minnowhead.  I’m guessing if we had targeted them with smaller jigs we would have doubled or tripled our catch on them.  Smoked some up this week. 

[walros]

Ski:

Where did you go out of?

[Parmer]

Hunters has a road to the mud flats. 

[gim]

  On 1/11/2019 at 1:02 AM, leech~~ said:

Anyone getting any Jumbo's?  Something to make it worth a trip after my one Walleye! 

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There are a few but you'll likely have to catch at least 20 smaller dinks before you get one worth keeping.  I experienced this problem in October before ice up.

[bowhuntermitch]

11/11-11/13 Report 

 

We fished out of Red Door Resort from Friday to Sunday AM. Red Door has maintained their roads very well. Easy sailing there. We fished off the second break, about 80 yards from the heave. Tried to get away from the big groups of people, which we were able to do. Travel was not bad at all off the plowed roads, but we only had to go about 100 yards to get away from the groups. 

On a map, it wasn't an ideal spot, but it produced fish in 30-31'. I think getting away from people was key. Friday we got our two wheel houses set up (within 30 feet of each other) and started fishing. One house caught every single fish Friday from noon to throughout the night...in the same hole. No other hole produced. Saturday morning we moved the house that wasn't catching anything about 15 yards, and also moved the Finicky Foolers/Tip-ups about 15-25 yards. All of the sudden we started catching fish. Funny how such a small move makes a huge difference. 

Plain hooks with medium 4" shiners produced as well as a white demon on a deadstick. Our group of 5 caught 25ish fish in 48 hours. Biggest being 24". 2 keepers (21" & 23") that went back down the hole, and a bunch of 19" fish. The first fish of the trip was a HUGE 12" perch. 


If you're not catching fish, move! Even if it's only 15 yards like in our case! 

All in all a great trip to the big pond!

[Parmer]

Am heading up this weekend... Not sure where we going out of... But like to be away from the groups also. I usually go out of hunters but they are having road issues again. I am sure it will be resolved by Friday. 

[relax]

I'm also thinking about going up this weekend. We were thinking about Barnacles or Red Door. It will be our first time out of either resorts. Any recommendation or opinions about the resorts and their roads? Thanks in advance!

[monstermoose78]

Listen to what either place tells you for tips.

[bowhuntermitch]

  On 1/16/2019 at 6:50 PM, relax said:

I'm also thinking about going up this weekend. We were thinking about Barnacles or Red Door. It will be our first time out of either resorts. Any recommendation or opinions about the resorts and their roads? Thanks in advance!

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I use both throughout the ice seasons. Both do a very good job with their roads. From what I've seen, I think Red Door is usually a little busier just because they seem to do more advertising. I could be wrong.

 

Sounds like Barnacles will be open to East Flat this weekend with pickups, while Red Door is waiting. I'd contact them to make sure nothing has changed, though. 

 

[relax]

  On 1/17/2019 at 2:21 PM, bowhuntermitch said:

 

I use both throughout the ice seasons. Both do a very good job with their roads. From what I've seen, I think Red Door is usually a little busier just because they seem to do more advertising. I could be wrong.

 

Sounds like Barnacles will be open to East Flat this weekend with pickups, while Red Door is waiting. I'd contact them to make sure nothing has changed, though. 

 

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Thanks bud!! Cheers..

[Rick]

Agate Bay Resort

Mille Lacs Lake Ice Fishing Reports

 

UPDATE JAN 7, 2020

We had a very good day. We finished plowing our roads ahead of the cold front moving in tonight. We also pulled all of our rental houses out and blocked, banked and started most of them.

 

Tomorrow we will finish setting up the rentals including starting the satellite tv in the premier ice cabins and lodges. That can take forever with Dish TV.

We will plow the roads that need it after this wind.

 

We will set up road signs. If it goes well tomorrow, we may pull some private houses on Thursday. If it goes bad, we hope to start pulling private houses and letting wheel houses with season packages out on Friday.

 

Unfortunately I do not have much parking space on land and I will need it this weekend for pulling private houses out so I will be closing my access to daily accesses of any kind. 

 

We intend to give our seasonal skid houses and wheel house customers first crack at spots along our road before we open it up for daily or weekend access customers.

Hopefully we will open for access customers on Monday, Jan 13, 2020. We hope you understand. We will have plowed driveways along all of our roads for wheel houses like last year. We may restrict the size of house or truck we allow depending on ice conditions, but it looks real good now. We will also evict anyone found to be going too fast this year.

This year in particular the ice needs you to drive even slower than normal. If you do not want to do that, please go somewhere else.

[fish_hunt_guy]

A buddy and I made it out 2 weekends ago. Caught a wide variety of sizes from 10” to 28.75” was the big gurl. Even caught our keeper box fish! Also tried the mud midday and found some tulipee. If u haven’t tried livescope I highly recommend!  Tight lines!

[IceHawk]

Great Report Nice batch of eyes. Yes I have experienced live scope fished a couple times this winter with one, its a absolutely amazeing game changer to say it lightly!! It cuts down the hunt to half the time allowing to be way more productive on the ice. 

[Rick]

Share your last Mille Lacs Lake Fishing Report please?

[leech~~]

What I'd like to know if anyone getting any Jumbos anymore?  I used to fish Lacs a lot but  haven't been out there in a few years and Jumbos was half my take home.  

[IceHawk]

I use to chase Jumbos a bunch over in the SE corner around Hennipen Graveyard area and I agree Leech was a blast. With some hard work we always seemed to find enough.  But over the years the jumbos became less and less so unfortunately I haven't went back up there solely targeting them. I know Tony Roach seems to get on them but what would anyone expect he basically is the MR Perch of Millacs

[DonkeyHodey]

  On 1/15/2020 at 8:39 PM, fish_hunt_guy said:

 

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Beauties!...

 

...But, oh oh!  where's the skins!  CO gonna pinch you! 

[leech~~]

  On 1/16/2020 at 11:21 PM, IceHawk said:

I use to chase Jumbos a bunch over in the SE corner around Hennipen Graveyard area and I agree Leech was a blast. With some hard work we always seemed to find enough.  But over the years the jumbos became less and less so unfortunately I haven't went back up there solely targeting them. I know Tony Roach seems to get on them but what would anyone expect he basically is the MR Perch of Millacs

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I use to do well on a few small spots on the back side of Spirit Island and I was always the only one out there on my sled.

 

Well except for the one day I saw someone walking across the ice to me.  I had to be more then a mile from shore or more.  It was a nice day, and this guy walks up to me and says he is a student at the U of M from Germany and just had to take a walk on this big lake he heard about!   We talked for about a half an hour as he told me that in Germany they will train you for a job but that is what you will be. So, if your a bricklayer your a bricklayer!  He said that's why he came here to train for what he wanted to do which was some kind of Engineering?  I asked him if he wanted a ride back and he said no I'll walk this is Great!     God Bless America! 

Edited January 17, 2020 by leech~~

[fish_hunt_guy]

  On 1/16/2020 at 11:31 PM, DonkeyHodey said:

Beauties!...

 

...But, oh oh!  where's the skins!  CO gonna pinch you! 

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Lol those were headed straight to the fryin pan. 
 

Rick, last weekend fishing was much slower. 

[gim]

My family and I used to hammer the perch in Isle Bay years ago.  Around Oct 1, they'd move in there and on a nice sunny calm day there would be 30-40 boats anchored in that bay catching them.  As the years went by, we caught more and more dinks and less and less jumbos.  Towards the end we would have to cull through 20 of them to get one jumbo.  It just wasn't worth it anymore.  There's definitely less jumbo perch in that lake than there used to be.  I'm sure the bigger walleyes took care of that (and now they're eating themselves).  The jumbos I catch now are mixed right in with the smaller walleyes so I more or less just catch them by accident.

Edited January 17, 2020 by gimruis

[leech~~]

  On 1/17/2020 at 1:18 PM, gimruis said:

My family and I used to hammer the perch in Isle Bay years ago.  Around Oct 1, they'd move in there and on a nice sunny calm day there would be 30-40 boats anchored in that bay catching them.  As the years went by, we caught more and more dinks and less and less jumbos.  Towards the end we would have to cull through 20 of them to get one jumbo.  It just wasn't worth it anymore.  There's definitely less jumbo perch in that lake than there used to be.  I'm sure the bigger walleyes took care of that (and now they're eating themselves).  The jumbos I catch now are mixed right in with the smaller walleyes so I more or less just catch them by accident.

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So, you and your family caused the problem!    

[gim]

  On 1/17/2020 at 2:06 PM, leech~~ said:

So, you and your family caused the problem! 

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Ya we likely played a role in contributing to it, I can't argue that.  The days of going home with a dozen jumbo perch are OVER, that's for sure.

[leech~~]

  On 1/17/2020 at 4:57 PM, gimruis said:

 

Ya we likely played a role in contributing to it, I can't argue that.  The days of going home with a dozen jumbo perch are OVER, that's for sure.

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Jumbo Perch hit nets too.  Interesting how the two deeper swimming fish seemed to disappear about the same time while most of the sallow and rock lovers Small Mouth, Musky, and Northern are still out there and doing well.  

[Rick]

Nice bite going on Garrison reef in 20' and the myr mar mud in 27' even better.

Have fun!