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Bruce's First Deep Water Walleye
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With the official policy preventing US citizens from entering Canada extended to September 21st, this all but killed any notion of making it up to Lac Seul Outpost this year, as well everyone is got something going on this summer. Bruce, Pete and I decided to try and repeat the performance from the week before on Mille Lacs and do some deep water trolling. I know these guys have never tried this so it would be a good experience for them. Deciding last Friday would be a good time, we hooked the boat up and met Bruce at the public landing just north of the Casino. The weather had been stable all week with Friday being no exception.Calm conditions were nice but it was pretty hot with temperatures in the low 90's. With 2 goals in mind, 1 was to catch fish and the other was to show Bruce some of the screen shots of fish on the depth finder as they are easily detectable in the waters deeper than 20 feet. The strategy would be the same as last week, one planar board out with a Reef Runner while putting 2 lead core rods out each side of the back pulling #5 Shad Raps. The nice thing about the lead core setups is it's easy to change out baits and try to establish a pattern faster. On the way back last week we drove over both 9 Mile and 7 Mile flats and they had a lot of fish around them so it was decided to start there. Doing a complete circle around 7 Mile produced nothing so we made a beeline and trolled across to 9 Mile Flat. Although we marked a lot of fish, as my buddy Kevin would say....."You can't make mark soup!". Circling 9 mile produced nothing so we headed back to 8 mile where we got 7 the week before. As stated before, 8 Mile Flat is a H shaped flat and is the longest mid-lake structure on Mille Lacs. It is nice trolling the outside edges as it is fairly straight north and south, with the long stretches, one can easily control the trolling direction and speed. As around 7 and 9 mile flat we were marking a lot of fish. Unfortunately nothing was hitting. Probably close to 3 miles long with a couple of smaller flats off of the northwest tip, it took about 1 1/2 hours to troll the west side. Unlike last week we arrived at the end of the flat with nothing to show. Deciding to change colors on my lead core, I let out the 4 colors of line and continued trolling. As we turned east it was decided to weave in between the smaller flats on our way to the northeast corner. All of a sudden the starboard side lead core rod starts to bounce. Grabbing the rod and giving it to Bruce, I slowed the boat down to give us some better control. First fish in the boat, about a 23 inch walleye. Well, at least we weren't skunked! Thinking we should change Pete's Shad Rap to a different color we set the lines and started to troll again. Last week the hot Shad color was a Chartreuse back and a white bottom but it did nothing this trip. The Hot Steel pattern was the winner as it does have a silver back and chartreuse bottom, go figure! As stated before, the nice thing about the lead core is changing lures is quite easy.
Not going too far when the rod started bouncing again. Although not a huge fish, maybe 19 inches, it
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The first double of the day.
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was a fish never the less! Again this was on the #5 Shad Rap. We got the lines set again and started trolling as Pete indicated we were due for a double. Once again the starboard line started bouncing, as I handed Bruce the rod, Pete reeled his in like always to prevent any tangles. All of a sudden Pete announces he has a fish on as well. Suspecting the fish hit the bait as he started to reel, we definitely got our first double! Pete's fish wasn't very big, about 15 inches but it was nice to see some smaller year classes being caught. In the meantime Bruce had another one about 22 inches. With the hot temperatures we try to get the fish back in the water with minimal handling and every fish swam away healthy however Bruce's fish stayed on the surface. Rather than just leaving it we turned around to see if we could revive it somewhat. Approaching the fish and attempting to net it, the minute the net touched the walleye it slapped it's tail and disappeared. We ended up with 1 more walleye for a total of 5 fish boated. A couple of thoughts, first they say never leave biting fish. Hindsight is 20/20 and we should have never left the north end to continue down the east side of 8 Mile. Catching all of our fish weaving between those smaller flats should have been a clue. Secondly unlike the week before, we never caught a fish on the planar board, whereas last week 4 of the 7 were on the planar board. I did switch out baits to match more closely to the colors of the Shad Raps we were having success on but it just wasn't in the cards that day.
We ended up back at Bruce's cabin before having dinner at the Lonesome Pine on Bay Lake. The prime rib was superb! After dinner we ended up at Jerry Kiffmeyer's place and I will not elaborate how that went! Breakfast at Ricky Shermer's before heading home, 7 hours in the hot sun, a big meal and maybe too many refreshments made for a full 2 days. Oh well, I'd do it again. With the water temperatures dropping and myself getting better at boat control I might just do some sunset trolling this fall on the reefs. I used to do this all the time before the restrictions set in on Mille Lacs. It's also a great time for smallies on the river as I have not done very well this year, maybe hit the river this week end. I have still not mastered this new Blogger and may have to change my format to make it easier, driving me crazy!
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