Lead Line Confidence Has Arrived

Last weekend my brother Steve had Friday off with the intent of having me take him fishing on Mille Lacs.  Never fishing a full moon walleye bite he wanted to see what it was all about.  In past years the September full moon has been very successful and although the last couple of years have been less than stellar, I have always had at least one good trip before October.   The 3 days before saw record rains in southern Minnesota and Wisconsin resulting in serious flooding for this time of year.   The weather showed Friday as a clearing day with Saturday having a chance of rain again.  Meeting me at work Steve and I headed to the lake with the wind howling from the northwest with gusts to 35 mph.   My strategy to fish the east side was definitely going to change.  Arriving at Lundeen's, Bill agreed that it would be a wet outing if we launched at Liberty Beach but the good news was the reports from the north side where it would be significantly calmer.   The latest fishing reports had the deep sand bite on the north end pretty good.  Running lead lines in 27 feet of water with #5 Shad Raps was the rumor for the hot bite.  With the 25mph steady wind out of the NW, this was a great option.  27 feet is fairly close to shore and after a short run, we snapped a Hot Steel Shad Rap on one rod and a Clown color on the other, let out 5 colors of line and headed east.  I am still amazed how well my 115 Suzuki trolls down, even with the wind it was under 2.0 mph.  Although the wind was blowing hard, the wave action was more than tolerable.  Within the hour we had our first rod double over, a nice 18 incher for the live well.  Starting at 3:00 in the afternoon, by 7:00 we had boated 7 walleyes, 5 for the live well and 2 were too big to keep such as this one pictured.  It was my best day fishing with lead line and it is definitely boosting my confidence with this presentation. 

At 7:00 it was time to find a shallow reef and check out the post sunset bite.  A 4 mile run to the shallows in front of Fisher's we trolled for about an hour and decided we should have stayed in the deeper water.  The waves were significantly higher and the fish were no where to be found.   Heading back we loaded the boat and made a beeline to my friend Mark's ice house for the night.  Our plan was to catch supper, get a good nights sleep and head home in the morning.   Located at Fisherman's Wharf, we stopped at the resort restaurant to eat before cleaning our walleyes.  The nights special was pot roast with all the trimmings for $10, a fabulous deal considering how much food we got.  A short ride to our quarters found a nice surprise, Mark had decided to drive up and stay the weekend.  After cleaning nice batch of walleyes, we proceeded to solve the world's problems, something that that took till 4 in the morning.  Admittedly we only scratched the surface!  Here is another nice walleye we nailed.  If you notice the pictures are once more lacking quality.  Being too excited at the landing, I again left my camera in the car.  I bought an extra camera to keep in the boat especially for my forgetful streaks however that camera was also in my car.  So much for that plan!  Steve took these with his fancy smart phone, not bad as I had little choice.

It is going to be hard to get out this weekend with a wedding on Saturday and a surprise anniversary party on Sunday.  The weather forecast is predicting a hard frost for Saturday night and things are drying out nicely.  With Indian Summer scheduled for next week, the fall rush to get those last minute chores done has started.