Fishing with Glen!

Glen's first fish, 26 inches

Thursday afternoon I invited my friend Glen Collins, a work associate from Chicago, to go fishing on Mille Lacs Lake for walleye.  Glen is a good long time friend as I have known him for more than 25 years.  He is a fixture in the transformer industry and I have fished with him during one of our meeting in Jacksonville, FL.  Glen had some appointments in the area and I figured it was a good idea to take him up to Mille Lacs as the big fish were biting.  He took care of his appointments in the morning and by 1:00 he showed up at work.  We drove to my pole shed, hooked the boat up and headed north with our first stop at Lundeen's to get bait and a license.  I had bait left over from Sunday's trip and the weather was looking beautiful so we got what we needed from Bill's and headed for the landing.  The water was dead calm with an occasional ripple area but for the most part no wind.  Wanting to try the flats again I headed right to Sherman's and my dilemma with my new boat becomes obvious.  With my previous tiller boats it was easy to follow the break line at the top of the flats, where the big walleyes hang out.  Now it's really hard to do that, I simply create a route on the map then have my front trolling motor follow it up and down the contours on the map portion of the chart on the depthfinder however it is difficult to make adjustments.  I am sure at some point I will figure it out but for now it is what it is! I rigged up a couple of poles with spinner/crawler rigs and set them in the rod holders, not a bad way to fish.  I tie my own spinner rigs and use TruTurn hooks.  If a walleye hits the rig the hooks simply turn and they hook themselves quite easily.  When the rods are in the holders, if a walleye hits the rod buckles over and is generally hooked quite well.  It wasn't about 15 minutes after we started that one of the rods was bent over, I grabbed it and gave it to Glen...after all he was my guest.  This fish was a real fighter and after a courageous battle, Glen finally got it to the boat where I netted this beautiful 26 inch walleye.  A few pictures and we let her back into the water as she bolted away.   What I like about the Tru Turns also is the fish are generally hooked in the front of the jaw making for a safe successful release possible.  As you can see in the picture, it was pretty calm, as compared to last weeks outing, a nice change of pace for sure!

Glen's 2nd fish, a 27 incher

Replacing the crawler and resetting it wasn't long before Glen's rod was bent over and he had a nice fish on.  It fun fishing the calm and deep water as you can generally see the fish as it is getting near the boat.  It was another really nice fish and actually looked bigger than the first one he caught.  After netting the walleye and measuring it, this one topped 27 inches, another dandy walleye.  I was trying to get him to hold the fish right however I don't like to keep them out of the water too long so this pose will have to do.  It still is an impressive fish for sure.  We spent another hour on Sherman's and got another nice walleye however I decided to try something else that we do on Mille Lacs, Bobber fish.  My rods were all set up for 23 feet of water to we went back to where we were last Sunday and tried some bobbering there. We did get a couple of smaller walleyes and it was good to show Glen this different type of fishing.  We did miss a number of fish as maybe we were using too big a leech for the size of fish that we were hitting.  After an hour it was time to go as Glen asked about the Rock Hump to the east.  With the calm water and warm temperatures it was nice to just cruise for a while so we headed to Spirit Island.  As we rounded the island Glen was taken back by the half dozen or so white pelicans hanging around the rocks.  Being used to Florida, it is uncommon to see pelicans this far north, or so he thought.  He took a few pictures to send and we turned south to Anderson Reef to cast for smallies.  That wasn't too productive for sure.  After about 30 minutes of that we headed back to Indian Point to troll the long reef that extends out into the lake.  It was getting late anyway and it would be smart to be back close to the landing so I rigged 2 rods with shad raps and we trolled.  It was a good chance to try and see how the kicker worked in conjunction with using the front trolling motor to steer the boat.  This seems to be the acceptable way to do this but for me everything's a learning experience with this boat.  Some of my friends say that I will figure it out but as stated in the past, going from a tiller to a wheel has it's challenges.  Anyway I was able to stay in the "magic" 6 foot depth and man did something slam my shad rap.  It hit hard and was obviously a nice fish so I handed the rod to Glen while I got organized.  A couple minutes later I netted a nice plump 22 inch walleye, which was really nice to see.  I had assumed that this fish was a big Smallmouth bass but it didn't jump at all.  We let it go and continued on where I nailed 2 smaller smallies, in the 14 inch range.  It was 8:30 so we decided to head out, another very successful day on Mille Lacs.  Glen was very satisfied and I was happy that he had a good time as it get's hard to schedule things that work out great.  We are talking about chartering a grouper fishing trip during our TTA meetings at the first of December in Florida.  Glen's cousin Tim has a nice place on Marco Island we can stay so I am definitely going to figure that one out!

Last Monday I met with my friend Bruce Wiley for a discussion about a few things as he was heading up to Lac Seul on Friday.  Because a few guys were leaving early and he was staying till Saturday, July 2nd, he invited me to come up and fish Wed thru Friday (June 28 - July 1) and leave with him on Saturday.  He said I could bring someone so I called my brother Steve knowing full well he would not let this opportunity go unfilled.  Our plans are to head up on Tuesday and stay overnight, meeting Bruce at the landing at 7:30 on Wednesday morning, We should be in camp by 10:00 and fishing by 10:30 so hopefully I will have some great pictures next week.  My friend Paul Wenaas just got back and sent me some areas he thought would be good for bigger fish.  I have been getting ready all weekend and am excited to take advantage of Bruce's hospitality for sure.  Steve is going to pull my boat up and I plan on taking the time to get reacquainted with my GoPro Camera system.  Funny but this will be the 3rd trip to Lac Seul with my boat and interesting enough, most of the hours on the boat will be from there, not that I am complaining!!!  I have a list of stuff to bring including Large Curd Cottage Cheese, which Ken and Brenda, the camp owners love.