Mille Lacs Smallie Report

[catchin'whopper]

Tried posting on Mille Lacs site for smallie report with few takers, so i guess try to hit this one up.

Has anyone been up there recently? My brother Alphid and i are going up tomorrow morning to scope out the sw side of the lake. Just wondering if any tips for spots out there or how the fishing has been for those bronzebacks, thanks.

-Catchin'

[catchin'whopper]

Will do, Brandon. Thanks for the additional info, makes sense why there has been little chatter out there. I guess it is supposed to be light winds out there tomorrow too, to make it a little less stressful.

Later,
-Catchin'

[This message has been edited by catchin'whopper (edited 08-08-2003).]

[eats]

Reports were spotty last weekend due to a series of fronts passing through. Didn't hear of much from the south side. We managed a few on the north side but nothing to write home about. Stable weather this week should make for good conditions this weekend. Any rocks should hold fish.

I tried the north end this morning and got the ol' skunk. The lake was very rough early, took a couple over the bow.

Good luck, let us know how you do.

Brandon

[This message has been edited by eats (edited 08-08-2003).]

[catchin'whopper]

Went out on saturday morning, my brother and i got out around 7:30 or so, launched from teh SW side public access just a little north of the casino.

Had a decent smallie nip the end of my chart/brown cra rattle trap but came unbuttoned. The rest of the day we spent hitting various rock reefs to only see 30+ smallies cruising on them. No kidding, all these fish were quite possibly over 4 pounds. We saw a couple that were just hanging by rock marker buoys that looked to push the 22" mark, those were some big brown blurbs sitting in the water.

Anyway, fish seen on the rock reefs cruising were not interested in anything we threw: shallow crank, traps, jerk baits, grubs, tubes, senkos, pop r, buzz bait, spinner bait, light jig with spider grub (for slow fall). All these things produced no biters as my brother Alphid and i left the lake without one fish, i have no idea the last time that has happened and was a little hard to stomach. Both of us were amazed at the size of fish seen though, we are thinking these fish will turn into biters pretty quick.

One other note, on teh reefs we check on the sw portion of the lake, it seemed like most of the reef would be dead, then we would run into bunches of them as the fish seemed to locate themselves in specific areas of them, more so on the south side area of the reef. not sure if that can be deemed a pattern, but it is what we saw. Good luck, keep the reports coming if you will!

Catchin'

[EBass]

Moody aren't they? Times like that will make me toss some leeches at them.

[eats]

Got some bad attitudes don't they?

When its tough like that I like a big fat leech on a split shot rig. Work the reef real slowly, finesse em. I've used circle hooks this summer with no deep hooked fish. Not sure if I've missed any because of the circle hooks cause I miss so many anway .

Brandon