Back On the Big Water

Ben's First Walleye of the Day

 I won't bore you with the details however Mille Lacs Lake opened back up to walleye fishing August first after being closed for the entire month of July.  August is not one of the best months to fish walleyes on Mille Lacs but after a scorching hot July, with a moderate amount of rain in the area as well as cooler night time temperatures, the lake surface temperature  has dropped at least 8 degrees, things were going in the right direction.  After watching this video of one of my favorite YouTube guys, Tom Boley, it was titled, Mille Lacs, Part 2.  Tom is a young guide from the Hayward, Wisconsin area and has his own YouTube channel regarding fishing.  He does an excellent job of explaining the fishing scenario's on his video's and is especially interesting when it comes to going through how to use electronics to locate fish.  Tom posted this video last week and it influenced myself to get and try lead lining an long line trolling with planar boards in the deeper water off the flats on Mille Lacs.  I have been asked buy a good friend Greg Kinblom  to take him and his son Marcus back to Mille Lacs and this was a perfect time.  Although storms blew by the night before, Sunday was to be calm, partly cloudy, a perfect setup for trolling.  Unfortunately Marcus has a girlfriend who's parents were coming over for dinner on Sunday............it was a no go.  In their place was my good friend Jack Taylor and his son Ben.  I guess next time I see Marcus we'll have to go over his priorities once again!  Heading to 8 Mile Flat, the strategy was to fish just off the 25 foot break in the 32 feet of water. With barely a breeze we headed out from the landing at full throttle, full trim.  It was fun opening the boat up and still remain comfortable as we made the 6 mile run in about 15 minutes.   Everything ran exceptionally well with the exception of my live well valve, it still won't shut off the water coming into the live well on Recirculate.  More on that later.  8 Mile Flat looks like a big H facing north and south.  Starting on the west (Left) side of the bottom of the flat we positioned ourselves about 50 yards off the edge and got set up.  The first rod we rigged was a long line rod with a Reef Runner 800 deep diver.  This lure will run at 28 feet with the about 150 feet of line let out.  Ben originally wanted to use pink, not my favorite on Mille Lacs but the kid needed to learn a lesson so we put on a pink colored Reef Runner.   Using a line counter reel we let the proper amount of line then attached a Offshore Tackle planar board to the line which will carry it 20 yards to the side of the boat.  Next Jack an I rigged up a lead line setup, each has an 8'6" trolling rod with a large reel that carries 10 colors of lead line.  Lead line is simply a braided Dacron line with a lead core inside.  The line comes in a variety of diameters based on the breaking strength one is interested in.  Regardless of the size (diameter) they all have on thing in common, the line is segments of 10 yards (30 feet) long that are different colors.  For each segment or color, the line at 2.0 mph will sink 5 feet deep.  With normal lead line to fish 25 feet deep, one would let out 5 segments or colors.  On the end of the lead line is tied a fluorocarbon leader, maybe 10 - 12 pound test and I tend to make them 10 - 15 foot, so the lure has a minimal effect on how deep the lure itself will run.  With a number 5 Shad Rap it may only run a couple of feet deeper than the stated lead line depth,  and usually a walleye on the bottom will come up 4 to 5 feet and slam the lure.  In all the years fishing I would estimate that the number 5 shad rap crankbait has caught more walleyes in my boat than all other crankbaits combined.  Of course I do use them alot!  In the case of lead line my reels are loaded with Suffix brand 832, a thinner diameter line that runs 7 to 8 feet per color instead of the standard 5 foot per color.  The thinner diameter allows one to add more line to the reel and in the case of using the 832, I can get all 10 colors on my line counter reel just in case something would happen to the end of the line, which I've experienced before.  In 32 feet of water we attached our lures and set them to the proper depth.  It took a while but about after an hour of trolling Ben's planar board was acting funny.  I had him reel it in and checked the lure, nothing so telling Ben pink was not cutting it I attached one of my favorites, a brown perch pattern.  20 minutes latter Ben pull this walleye from the depths.

Fishing wasn't terribly fast.  We had a little trouble with the planar boards a those reef runners pull very

Jack's 25 inch walleye

hard and was finding it difficult to keep the back line clip in place.  Keeping slack between the main line clip near the front of the board and the back clip that is hooked to a flag system is critical as the flag acts as a strike detector and if it's down you probably have a fish.  After getting it clamped on the line we let it out and before long the flag went down, another fish.  That would be Reef Runner 2, Shad Raps 0.  We started aggressively changing colors on our Shad Raps, finally putting a Fluorescent green/white on Jack' line and before long his rod was bouncing in the rod holder.  One nice thing is my EZ Troll, kicker motor throttle control.  When we had a fish on we could dial down the speed to a crawl, this would not mess up the existing lines that were set yet allow one to fight the fish without the pull of the motor.  This fish looked like a nice walleye and once in the net it was definitely what we were looking for, a 25 incher.  Deciding that this might be a clue I changed the Shad Rap on my line from a crawfish colored pattern to a lighter colored, similar to Jack's.  The previous strategy was to use a color similar to the Reef Runner as Ben had already caught 2 nice walleyes, but I had dragged it for over an hour with little success.  Unfortunately I had a nice white/chrome shad rap on earlier but it got hung up in some weeds that were floating and the line broke.  We did go back to try and find it but were not successful unfortunately.  Well after 30 minutes of switching my rod starts to bounce in the holder, I was finally on the board.  After setting the lines and another 30 minutes of trolling Jack tied into a dandy.  The battle ensued and he finally got it up to the surface.  I estimate it was in that 27 to 18 inch range.  Putting the net in the water and asking Jack to bring it my way, a quick head shake and the hook came out.  A quick flip of it's tail and she was gone.Although it meant no picture, it's a great way to release a fish as we work hard to unhook them quickly and get them back in the water.

Finally a Walleye!

So a quick day of fishing which included 6 hours on the water, 7 walleyes to the boat, and a variety of lures tried.  Maybe not my best day of trolling but we did not come home skunked.  The lake was beautiful and with a slight breeze from the Northwest it was just about perfect.  the original plan was to go on Saturday but severe storms had moved through that area Friday night and usually fishing isn't that good after a big storm rolls through.  Apparently they had an isolated storm come across Mille Lacs Saturday night..........well that sounds like a great excuse!  Either way it was fun, especially being able to teach Ben how to run the boat, he did fine so all I had to do was to bark out some instructions and keep the lines going.

I am still having issues with this new version of blogger, it tends to drive me crazy.....I suppose it's the old adage, it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks!  Between trying to get out on the boat and the river, there are plenty of things to do.  The second crop of sweet corn is ripening this week, the tomatoes look great and it will be time to make salsa again this year.  Canada recently closed it's border until September 21st so no trip to Lac Seul this fall, a pretty big disappointment but one just has to take it in stride.  It looks like our rescheduled Leech Lake Opener on October 9th is still on so that is good.  The winning strategy there should be trolling shad raps and I am set.  My brother Steve is working on getting a new boat and I've committed to helping him remove any electronics from his current boat and reinstalling them.  One thing that has me going is seeing the posts from my good friend Keith Holtan (he is located at the left side of this post or here ) .  Gary Blinn, a guy who frequents Keith's place in Alaska but also by chance is often at Lac Seul Outposts when we are there, is pictured with a nice silver salmon.  It takes me back to those days with my brother and cousins as this is the perfect time of the year to fish Alaska as the pinks come into the rivers and it's like catching sunfish!  Those were some good times for sure.  We will see Keith this winter, maybe I'll help him with his booth at the Sport show this year, and we'll definitely have to go ice fishing again!