Smallies on Mille Lacs

[Deitz Dittrich]

Got to hit the water with my younger brother on wed. WE ended up boating about 20 fish.. o.k.. not about.. we did land 20 and lost a few others.. we caught 2 fish that were right about a pound each.. then all the rest were better than 2.25 lbs...with many between 2.75 and 3.25 lbs.. what a lake..

anyway.. my question is this.. we caught a lot of fish that had a scar or wound on the top of thier heads behind the eyes.. I could only guess that this was from them trying to turn over rocks to get at crawfish?. Has anybody else seen this?

If it had only been one or 2 fish I would have just thought wow.. but this was like 8 of the 20 fish?

[AWH]

I think you're on the money with your theory. But maybe someone else will know more than me. I was out the other day and did some smallmouth fishing during the day and pounded my head against a wall trying to figure out the muskies early and late in the day. The musky hunt was unsuccessful. I did get 7 bass up to 19" though.

A number of the bass that I caught were also scarred in the area that you described. I played around with my Aqua Vu while I was out there and there are a ton of crayfish out there. Plenty on sandy bottoms as well. So you wouldn't think the bass would have to go through all the effort of hunting in the cracks between boulders. But I don't know what else those marks could be from.

Aaron

[LEECH21]

Check out the largemouth bass pics in the photo posting forum. There is a few pics of a lgmouth bass with a wound on the top of its head.

Were they like those?

They were guessing they were from herons.

[Deitz Dittrich]

Yep.. very similar!... I find it very hard to believe it was from a heron.. the spots are all in the Exact same spot on every fish. Either that or them birds have dang good am to hit the fish on the same spot.

[wormburner]

Deitz, I am sure you are correct with your rock and crayfish idea, I have seen the same scars on the Smallies that come from Lake Vermillion and we all know how many rocks and crayfish are up there!

[Mark Christianson]

For this case I'd say its most likely the fish digging after crayfish in the rocks.

[senkoskipper]

maybe a boat was flying bye and the prop hit the smallie on the head.

[rascalP]

Deitz,

Were you fishing all the usual spots? I'll be up there Tues & Wed. Stag party Tues night on Twin Pines launch. Fishing smallies Tues morn and Wed AM (late AM ). Sounds like the muskies are very tough now. Will wait a couple a weeks.

rascal

[Deitz Dittrich]

ras I sent you an e-mail...

[fievel9922]

Deitz,

I was up last weekend and noticed the same thing. I did not notice it on as many as you did may be the fact i did not catch as many. LOL. I would totally agree with you about them turning over the rocks for the crayfish or chasing one into a hole and slamming into the rocks. This is actually the first year i have seen them with that scar though. I dont know if anyone else has seen them in the past on mille lacs with the scar. Was curious how deep you were fishing and what presentation worked best for you. We managed to get 12 before it got to hot on saturday and 90% were on tubes on about 3-5 fow. I fish the big pond just about every weekend and have not really gotten into a mess of them yet this year. Have notice a lot of the fish i have caught are right at 18 inches.

[Deitz Dittrich]

F- Sounds like I was doing similar.. I was fishing something called a "Stupid Rig" Its just a modified lightweight carolina rig. I was using a baby brush hog bait as a lure. 1/8 oz weight for the sinker. 3-6 feet of water on rock trasitions!

[The Grebe]

This is'nt how the smallies got the contusions on their heads, but last summer we were making trips up to Mille Lacs about every other night, we had found a hot spot and we were having a ball catching wallys from shore.

We seen a couple of good sized smallies hovering over the rocks in about 2-3 feet of water and they had been there each time we went up.

They would get scared off for a minute or two sometimes, but they would always come back. Along comes a large Muskie, cruising slowly along the shoreline, a big "Woosh" a swirl of water and no more smallie.

The next time we went up, the same thing happened to the second one...maybe the way to get the uncooperative Muskies to bite is to use a lure that looks like a smallmouth bass hovering over the rocks?

[FlipR70]

Deitz,

As usual, I'm pretty sure you're dead on. I saw an Al Linder episode (I'm not sure if it was In-fisherman or his new show) where he was fishing smallies and noticed the same thing on a smallie he caught (on a spinnerbait?). He said something like "I've seen this before - it's from smallies chasing crayfish under the rocks." He held up the smallie and it looked exactly like what you are describing. He quickly changed to a tube and started to hammer them.

FlipR70

[Stratosman]

I have yet to see one with a scar on its forehead, out of two trips I havn't noticed one yet, or maybe I havn't been paying enough attention, how noticeable are the scars? And yes, I have gotten them all off rocks.