Mille Lacs can be maddening...

[Juan Grande]

I hit Mille Lacs with RumRiverRat yesterday for a full day of chasing smallies. We were on the lake around 7 AM and fished until 3. Fishing was slow to say the least. RRR ending up getting three bass on a black/silver DT-10 on the shallow rocks. I threw tubes, grubs, flukes, spinnerbaits, cranks and live bait and managed zero fish.

We fished Twin Bays, Wahkon, Malone Island, Isle bay as well as several rock piles on the SE side. After averaging a smallie every two hours we switched to pike in Isle bay, nada. Luckily we had some leeches so we went out to a deeper reef and pulled a 21" and 23" walleye the last hour and half we were there to help salvage the day a bit.

I LOVE chasing smallies on Mille Lacs, but they can be so unpredictable some times. I struggle if I can't find them on or near shallow rocks. Not sure if they were post spawn or spooky, but we didn't see a fish except for the three Rum caught.

Walleye snobs say bass fishing isn't a challenge and that it takes real skill to catch a walleye. Based on yesterday, I would say that the opposite is true

[bassfshin24]

I totally agree with...that lake can be super frustrating. My father in law was up there yesterday and was kayaking on. The NE side and said he saw a ton of smallies up real shallow on sand/gravel transition. I think they are spawning right now...did you guys see any beds? The only thing I could catch them on last week were spinnerbaits and KVD 1.5's.

[Juan Grande]

We didn't see fish roaming or on beds at all. It seemed like the shallows were devoid of life. We fished pencil reeds, docks and some shallow rock to sand/gravel transition areas and didn't see anything. Water temps were around 63 degrees.

Of course I'll be back, you take the good with the bad.

[Pherris]

Me and my brother in law were there on Friday and did pretty good. We got 20+ fish with the majority being smallmouth. The smallest was about 2lbs with the majority in the 3-4lb range. White spinnerbait on gravel flats worked early am then the balance of the day various baits in the pencil reeds. We did try the rock piles and only got 1 so we went back to the reeds.

Here is a couple photos.

Early am spinnerbait

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off the rocks

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in the reeds

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[reinhard1]

looks like you guys had some real fun out there. good luck.

[Superduty]

Fished the big pond for smallies from about 8am til 2pm. Ended up with 18 brown bass with the biggest just shy of 5 lbs. Long and skinny! I think most of them are done spawning up there. (At least where I was today they were not on the beds.) Only saw one on a bed and saw many old empty beds. Our biggest fish were definitely post spawn and showed the usual wounds and were skinny. Topwater bite was good for much of the morning. Switched to walleye fishing for the afternoon when it got cloudy. It seems like you can catch 17 to 25 inch walleyes everywhere out there right now.

[Juan Grande]

I agree Superduty, you can almost call it "catching" if you're looking for slot eyes up there.

[RK]

Like I've said many times here before: nothing can not bite like smallmouths...

[Juan Grande]

I guess we should have slowed down when we fished the pencil reeds. We worked them quickly with spinnerbaits and flukes.

[Superduty]

We didn't get many fish fishing slow. I probably was fishing a little deeper and further away from the spawning areas than you were. Fish were bunched up when I did find them. Lots of followers with many of our hooked fish.

[Juan Grande]

Yeah, that was the weird thing, we didn't see any fish at all. Had a couple northerns follow in Isle bay, but no smallies. I was scanning just to see if I could see any spooked fish as we moved around, but I didn't.

[Superduty]

Link to my biggest from the day. I havn't figured out the correct pic posting process...

[Juan Grande]

Superduty, you were close, just delete one of the "" off the front and back