JUNE Reports?

[fish hawk kris]

I hope this works, fishing reports is getting deep!

Kris

[LovenLifeGuy]

Fished with a good friend last night. We got on the lake around 5:30pm and fished until 10. We hit the flats for the first hour or so and picked up a few, all of which were too big with the biggest being just over 26 inch. Moved to agate reef for the rest of the night bobber fishing in about 15ft. We took home 6 eaters and could have taken 8 if we wanted. Only 1 over the slot and the rest were kept or too small. The key was to use a jig head. I didnt figure this out until later and my friend was putting most of the fish in the boat. It was my first time fishing the night hours and it was decent. Not as many big fish as early in the day! Good luck!

LovenLifeGuy

[aanderud]

Went out yesterday with my black lab. It was smokin hot action out there. I've NEVER seen anything like it. I've seen days back in '02 when 3 people could boat 150 fish, but yesterday was even better. I can't imagine how many we'd have caught if there was more than just me in the boat. Put it this way, I used 8 dozen crawlers, and I used the same crawler for multiple fish quite a few times. Granted, there were some swing and misses in there, as usual, but man....it was out of this world. I lost track somewhere in the 40s and resumed counting with some leeway on the conservative side, then gave up counting at 60. I fished til I was out of crawlers and went home, probably somewhere about 70-80 'eyes later. In 8 hours of fishing, I never waited 10 minutes to catch a fish. I honestly started wondering if the bite had "stopped" if the clock got toward 8 minutes without a hit. It was crazy and wild.

Couple comments. First, I've seen "don't drag it in the mud" quite a bit from people on this board and others. I've dragged a 1.5 ounce bottom bouncer in the mud ahead of a spinner for years and had great success. The key I think is that you should use at least a 9 foot snell. I suppose you could go longer (10-12 ft?), but it'd be nearly impossible to net them yourself at that point. I have personally tried, on a really hot action day, snipping 4 feet off a spinner that had a 9 foot snell on it, just to experiment, and WOW, the longer snell outfished the shorter one like 5 to 1. To me, the 9 foot snell is the nubmer 1 thing, above speed and everything else, for success on the mud. In fact, I'm confident that a long snell in a "dragged in the mud" approach will catch MORE fish most of the time than a normal snell with care taken to not drag the weight will catch, on any given day. That is to say, it's not just an "all right approach if you're too lazy to keep your weight 1 foot above the mud flat", but I think it's more successful in most situations. I think the mud cloud is a thing that attracts the fish over, as long as you have a snell long enough that the water starts to clear up a little back there by your lure. If it isn't catching you more fish, by all means don't be scared to switch back to shorter snell, but I always start with long and drag my weight.

Second, I saw a lot of swing-and-miss action nearby. I know that those guys were using lindy rigs. It was rare for me to miss a fish on my spinner. I think the fish are more aggressive toward a spinner, and I think there are 2 reasons for it. The first reason, I speculate, is that the spinner makes the bait look so much larger. Instead of a crawler with a plain or colored hook on it, or maybe 2, I had a green spinner, followed by a few beads, followed by a 3-hook crawler harness with chartruese painted gamakatsu hooks. When you have a night-crawler on that next to a night crawler on a lindy rig, the apparent size difference that the spinner/beads/color gives the bait is quite impressive. I think the apparently larger bait makes the fish more aggressive, with bites similar to when they hit a crankbait. The second reason I think the fish were are usually more aggressive is speed. I tend to drive 1.1-1.3 mph, and I don't mind if I go 1.5 at times due to wind, turning, etc. Faster speeds keep the blades moving, I can cover more ground, and the fish hit it harder, in my opinion. When I am fighting a fish, I tend to turn my electric motor way down just enough to hold my direction and position (autopilot is great). Note that if I mark a school of fish, it's not uncommon for me to go down to .9 mph or so, but I never intentionally go slower than that with a spinner. I want the spinner to at least have a chance at spinning.

More about speed -- well, I noticed yesterday when I was up at 1.5 mph, the fish would still hit, and when they did they were "on". I didn't try to stay at 1.5 for a couple reasons -- historically I've had somewhat less success at that speed, but mainly it makes my arm sore going that fast! If I can catch them a little slower, I try to, unless they seem really spread out and I want to cover maximum ground. So yesterday was a 1.1-1.3 day. When I ended up going really slow, say .5-.8 mph (turned with my line inside, gust of wind picks up and catches windshield, etc) the fish seemed to still hit my spinner, but they're more finicky about it, I think because the blade was probably not turning, it was more like a lindy rig. Now, I know to give them line and everything else, but the odds are, especially if fishing with newcomers, that there's going to be more swing and misses by the boat in general. I've trolled right past people lots of times and thought to myself, "normally I'd say I'm going too fast, but I'm catching at least as many fish, so maybe they're going too slow." Just like color, speed can be an important thing to vary. With spinners especially, don't be afraid to go "fast"....remember that 1.1-1.5 mph isn't "fast" compared to crankbait trolling, and they seem to be able to hit those pretty easily!

Oh, one other thing....when using lindy rigs and crawlers, I tend to 'gut hook' more fish than when I'm using spinners and moving faster -- again, I think this can be attributed to the more aggressive bit and the faster hook set. I.E. instead of feeling a nibble and feeding line and letting them potentially swallow a bait that's standing still, faster-moving spinners seem to result in a more aggressive hit, and they're basically "on". The hook should still be set to avoid 1/2 way up to the boat jump-offs, etc....but even if you don't set it aggressively, you can catch plenty of fish. Just ask my grandma. Out of the 70+ 'eyes boated yesterday, I had NO gut hooks. Every single one was a lip or top-of-the-mouth hook.

So, in summary -- go drag some spinners. Put it behind a bottom bouncer, 3-way rig, lindy weight, or whatever. I use a fairly heavy bottom bouncer to get it down there the 30 feet if necessary and to keep it from coming off if I need to go faster than originally anticapated to get the fish to bite.

I never decide on a speed until I start catching fish at one, and then try to replicate that. Yesterday the first fish I caught were at 1.3 mph, so I tried to stay about there. I marked way more fish in 21-22 feet of water near the edge of the flat than in deeper water. I caught only 1 fish in water deeper than 26 feet.

Anyone else having great luck with spinners on the mud? Great luck with any baits? Lindys? How's the crank trolling workin? Talked to one dude who was catching a ton of perch on crankbaits over the mud yesterday. I got only 1 perch that was of keeper size, somewhat disappointing.

Oh yeah, and the 3-hook hardness thing can be a pain too. Here's one thing I noticed -- gettin the hooks untangled from the net is way more work with 3 hooks. If they're uber-aggressive fish, then when the 2nd and 3rd hooks get cut off by your 20th or 30th fish on the same spinner, just don't bother replacing it. Fish with that spinner and 1/2 a crawler. Your bait will last longer that way, and you won't be forced in so early to buy more. Granted, I'd say that I missed fish at least 2x as much when I was down to 1 hook on my spinner, but the ease of net-management made it worthwhile. If the bite was slower and it took more than 5 minutes to get another bite, I would have probably put a new 3-hook harness back on to maximize hook setting ratio.

Size of fish caught --

27 inches - 1

24 inches - 4

20-22 inches - 12ish

under 13.5 inches - 0

13.5 - 14 inches - 2

14 - 16 inches - 10ish

19.5 inches - 1

16 to 18 inches - the rest

[CC Rocks]

Hey AA great report. I'm heading out tomorrow to see if I can recreate your luck. Haven't done much spinner stuff, I'm a jig and shiner guy. I have a couple green hooks and am in the process of making up some rigs. What type of sinkers do you like best? Can you give me a idea of what flat you were fishing? You can send me a email if you dont want the world to know. Any help for tomorrow would be greatly appreciated. Either way your posting pumped me up for tomorrow THanks.

[Laker_taker]

AA i was out on the lake for the first time ever this weekend and we had good luck yesterday too. but we didnt start fishing til like 4 and fished til like 9 or so. we used spinners on a drop shot rig. and it did seem that a longer leader worked better. we used leeches instead of crawlers and a gold spinner blade with like a 6 foot leader. we fished friday night and had a couple bites but didnt catch any but saturday we got 15 for 4 people. we were on the north end of the lake on the mud flats in about 21-26 feet of water. we released 3 fish a 23, 22, and a 21 incher and the keepers were from 16-19.75 inches.

[Stratosman]

Hell of a day on the water, nice post and good info. The flats are definately on fire.

[Marble Eye Guy]

Was out on the lake yesterday morning, and had a pretty succesful day. Not quite as hot as the bite that AA encountered, but it was still good. I took my brother-in-law with for his first ever mille lacs fishing trip, and besides a couple of trips to canada, his first walleye fishing trip. Needless to say he was pretty green. Fished the mud from 7am to 1pm, and boated 18 fish, 4 keepers, 8 21"-23", 5 24"-26", and 1 27-1/2". It took my brother-in-law a handful of hit-and-misses before he boated a nice 24". - Started out fishing on top of the flat (26'-28') with 8' snells, and a plain hook. Leeches seem to be the key to start. By 10am the action slowed, and we made the switch to spinner rigs. Moved out to 30'-33', and immediately put 3 in the boat, then went about a 1/2 hr without a fish. Moved back up on top and found fish once again. We were moving anywhere from .8 - 1.2 MPH, with fish coming at all speeds. Did not seem to matter as far as color of spinner, he was pulling a green and orange rig and I had on a brass spinner. - As you can see not the day that AA had, but still beats yardwork!

[aanderud]

Those are some rockin nice fish, Marble Eye. Laker Taker, you got a 19.75 incher! Holy cow, that rocks. THose fish are hard to find. Marble, you had a nice ratio of bigguns in your catch. Those few inches extra to get to 24+ sure seem to make them fight harder.

I have these 3-hook premade spinners that I bought up at trophy's or somewhere in Onamia. They are JB Lures I think, I'll go check. Yup they were made by JB Lures but the package says Meleen's Holiday SPorts and Guide Service.

Gary, I use bottom bouncers. I don't think it really matters, tdrop shot seems to work, as laker says, and I've used lindy weights if I'm going slower. Depending on your blade style, speed, and depth, the required weight will vary. I would say with most any spinner you'll need at LEAST 3/4 ounce at the depths we're talkin, but I use more. I use 1.25 ounce or higher, but I lost my last 1.25 ounce deal, so I was using 1.5 ounces yesterday. You could go all the way to 2, but that's like a rock on there. It's a little more than I like. Although, I have to say, when trolling with 6-8 people out of a pontoon boat, straighter down is better to reduce tangling, so then I sometimes throw 2 ouncers at least up front of the boat and in the middle people.

Oh, one thing on color -- the way they are hitting now, it probably doesn't matter what you throw in, but if they start to get picky, you might try some of the spinners with quick-change clevices on them. They're plastic and they allow you to snap the spinner off and put a different one on. It isn't like you can't just change the whole spinner, crawler rig and all, if you have a different one, but this way you can buy blades and have lots of colors available for less money. Blades are typically 99 cents or less, while a whole spinner rig can run 3 bucks or more. The sticker on one of my unopened ones here says 2.99. Just a tip for then the fish actually do get picky enough to favor one color over the other.

As for which flat I was on, I'll simply say this. The first flat I stopped on, I caught fish, and I never moved. I think they all have fish at this point, any of the big ones at least. I mean, I fished several sections of this flat throughout the day to try to get away from people, and there were fish everywhere. I saw launches from Terry's, Twin Pines, and somewhere else out there on this particular flat, and on flats to the north of it, and people on the launches were screaming all the time, so I assume there's fish everywhere.

Good luck gary, post a report when you get back. If you're makin your own leaders, giver a good 8 feet or more.

Oh, one other thing. I've done this in a pinch when I ran out of spinner rigs that had long snells. Instead of taking all of the beads/clevice/hooks, etc off the spinner with a 3 foot snell and moving to the longer 9 footer, I got lazy and just tied a 6 foot section of line with loop knots on both ends and chained it together with the 3 footer. LOL. That's pure laziness there.

Good luck everyone.

[Zach J]

ive fished from shore on this lake before but tomorrow will be my first in a boat so i should be looking foward to good time the way aanderuds last couple of post were ive wrote down some tips thats u posted any precise flats you locals would recomend?

[aanderud]

There's a lot out there, and the hot one any given day might not be the hot one the next day. I suggest just trying to hop around if you aren't at least marking a lot of fish. If you're marking them and they aren't biting, you may try other colors/speeds/baits before moving. Who knows. There's a lot of flats out there, I can't really say one is hotter than the other because I was only out on one last Saturday.

[Flick]

I was up this weekend and did ok. Between Sat. and Sun. morning two of us got about 25 fish. 2-26", 4-24" many from 20-23". Got fish riggin, pulling spinners and pulling cranks in no-mans land. Bobbered some east side rocks on Saturday night and only got 1 fish. Dont think we saw a net go in the water either.

[CC Rocks]

Thanks AA for your reply. Went out of the public access on the north side of the lake. We went straight out about 3/4 mile. Did ok, my fishing partner landed 6 keepers before I could hook one. He was on leaches while I pulled a single hook crawler. Same number of bites, but there's a higher percentage of hookups with leaches. No fish caught over 19". All the fish were 17-19. Perfect! Drove down to the bigger flats to see if we could land some bigger fish, but was shut down. Pretty windy in the middle yesterday.

Hope to be there again this Sunday, Monday. Didnt try the spinner gig, not very comfortable with them yet. Let me know if your going to be around this weekend.

Thanks,

[TroutAngler]

Forgive me. I'm new to this. I just bought a boat on Friday last week and am looking forward to getting out on Mille Lacs for some walleye action. Can you explain the best methods (Setups) to catch fish by trolling? Any help would be great.

[Cygolf1]

hey, I am looking for the same kind of info. I an heading up friday to sunday and want to know what I should have set up on my rods for my dad and buddy that donnt fish much. I will be trolling and slip bobber fishing at night. Never open water fished mille lacs, I have ten rods, what should I rig then with to cover all my bases for the weekend??? Can you explain in detail the rigs, or trolling lures you use and how should I set up the slip bobbers? I have three lighted bobbers what do I put under them? Do you have to make your own spinner rigs to get the 6-8 foot leader? Thanks for the info, RJ

[somedays]

The lake sure does have a lot of 21-27 inch fish this year. The bite seems to be good and the fish are fat so the baitfish must be there also.

I would set them up as followed 2 spinner, 2 lindy, 2 cranks, 2 bobber, and 2 jigging. The preferences of the fish change daily. Go with your gut, you will catch more fish if you are confident in the bait you are using.

[aanderud]

I concur with somedays, try to cover lots of bases. But, since there's 3 of you using 10 rods, I'd do 3 spinners, 3 bobbers, and then the others maybe do a couple jigs and a couple lindys. The spinner rods can easily be changed to crankbaits when you want to, just take off your weight/spinner and put on a crankbait. Use a swivel snap before it for easy changing. Use a plain hook or any type of jighead under the slip bobbers with leeches. I bought my spinners at Trophy's that have the long snells. Lindy rigs with long snells are self explanatory to make. As for cranks - I've never used them in really deep water, but you should be able to cover all the depth bases if you buy the right ones. Read other posts on this site. There are some pretty detailed posts about how/where to fish in the past couple weeks, from bobbers to crankbaits to spinner rigs.

[hoffy]

Hey guys: Great insight into fishing the Big lake. Can anyone help me with a lighting problem? I am going up fishing on Friday Night and I do not have running lights on my 17ft fishing boat. I HAVE Brake and turn signal lights, just fine. But when my lights are on, my trailer running lights are not on. What could be the problem? I have checked the (brown wire) up and down, and checked connections. Am I missing a ground somewhere. I have a white ground at the front of the trailer at the connection,that is attached on the tongue. I also have the white wire coming from each of the tail lights attached to the frame. Please, any help would be appreciated.

[REA]

Hoffy - Had the same problem a couple of weeks ago. Someone on the FM told me to check the fuse box under the hood of my truck (not the fuse box in the cab) and yep, that was it. I didn't even know there were fuses there!

[eyes1]

I had the same issue and it was the fuse under the hood that controled only the running lights. Mine will blow if I don't disconect my trailer lights before launching due to the open trailer lights

[JDM]

I had the same problem with lights and it was also the fuse under the hood. You might have to search for a while. If I remember, it wasn't the fuse I thought it would be.

[over the limit]

lets go fishing, come and pick me up i and i will show you all you need to know, i live in elk river

Rob email addres [email protected]

[Cygolf1]

Thanks for the info guys. Would you buy the spinner and lindy rigs up there or make tham or what??? Also, how many crawlers and leeches should we have for Friday night, Sat, and sun till noon??? Is there any other ideas or info out there. Thanks again, you have been a huge help, RJ

[walleyedan]

I have been using pre-made spinners (single hook Gamakatsu). Leeches are all you need. I was over there again this a.m. and did well. The 2 boys that I had out got sick and it wasn't even rolling that bad. I'm glad their Dad didn't hurl too, otherwise it could have been real ugly. We caught about 15 in 4 hours on the north end mud. Lost a few and missed a number also. Fun fishing!! Probably back tomorrow if it's not blowing too hard. Bring a couple of pounds of leeches.

Good luck,

Walleyedan

[JDM]

Walleye Dan - edges, tops, or both?

On most trips the edges of just off of the flats have been giving up bigger fish and the tops have been producing more "keepers."

[BigWadeS]

how big were the rollers today to get people sick?

[MIDNIGHT777]

Last week I found them mostly on the edges. Got into good numbers of both big and keepers from 9:30 to about 2. Later in the day (around 3 o clock) slowed down. Did not try tops or base, headed home. 7 ft. lindy, yellow hook, in line float about 2 feet off sinker. Leaches.

Matt

[Sportland_Bait]

Yesterday morning the north end flats were holding and producing in 22-26 feet. Mark them and fish them. Most fish are pretty active. Like Dan said bring lots of leeches.

Jason Erlandson

[walleyedan]

We caught the majority of our fish on top. but did catch a few around the base of the drop. I don't know how to measure the waves, but I would guess 3.5 to 4 footers, I don't know. All I know is I didn't want to leave, it was fun. Tip of the day: Don't set the hook with your finger on the line when using Fireline. Duh!! I have done it a couple of times in the last week, not good!

Walleyedan

[mojo06]

Thnaks for the informative post. Can you tell us how many feet are the crawler harnesses you are using?

Thanks, we are heading there tomorrow.

[minnesotatuff]

wd,

im writing about your tip...makes for a bloody real and sore finger. i know!...hahaha. this spring the problem has been they have been so aggressive i havent had time to release the line and i get caught trying to close the bail and start reeling without losing them. not even a chance for a hook set. the next time they bite like that im going with circular hooks.

regards,

minnesotatuff