Mille Lacs Update 8/8

[Paul Schlagel]

Here’s a long-overdue fishing report. I’ve been fishing almost non-stop for the past few weeks and it’s been difficult to keep up with phone calls and e-mails. I’m home this weekend for some long-overdue family time. I’ll begin with details about current fishing and conditions and follow with a summary of the past few weeks.

Current fishing: Current fishing is good. Not great, not poor, just good, and real hit-or-miss. Yesterday’s guests boated a 51”er on a Bulldawg. Thursday’s guests caught a 46” on a LOWRider at “Primetime” and missed another after dark. Wednesday was slow. Tuesday’s guests had great fishing with a three-fish day - 42 ½, 44, 50 ½. Monday was slow. Last Sunday I did a separate morning trip and night trip; the morning was dead with only one lazy follow, but a 47” was boated at Primetime by the night-trip guys.

Current conditions: The water temps for yesterday (8/7) were 67-68 deg. The water is pretty clear, probably due to weeks of below-normal water temps. The fishing pressure is pretty light. There are often walleye fishermen in the way when fishing the reefs, but there hasn’t been any jostling with fellow musky anglers.

Current fishing patterns: The fish have been pretty evenly spread between weeds and rocks for the past week or so. The sand is dead. If we got prolonged hot weather the sand bite might happen, but I doubt it. The sand will probably be a bust again this year; the sand bite really needs hot weather to get going. In the past week I’ve seen more action on top waters than usual. I don’t know if that trend will hold or not, but in the past week the muskies really seemed to like top water. Big blades and big plastic are still steady. Small, burner-style blades like the Spanky Baits 8” Fireball are good on shallow rocks. When the fish have been negative with a small strike-zone, we’ve had the best success slow-rolling a double-10, fishing a Bulldawg slow and low, or bottom-hopping a Big Joe kind of like a jig. True jigs, tubes, and creature baits haven’t produced. When the fish are more active, we’ve done well with fast and erratic action on the big plastics, fishing the double-10s fast, and running top waters.

Short-term forecast: The fishing has been better the past week since the water has warmed back up a bit. Two or three weeks ago it was slower when the water was colder. I think the fishing should pick up even more with the hot weather this weekend and this coming week. The water temps should get back to the low or mid-70s range and the fish activity should increase as well.

Past three-week summary: Last week was good, as I reported above, the two weeks before that were really tough. The past few weeks showed some of the coldest and most unsettled weather I’ve ever seen in the mid-summer. The later half of July and early-August generally has some of the steadiest, most consistent, most productive fishing of the year. This year is was hot or cold. The weather was cold which had a negative effect on water temps. The water temps were as high as 73-74 by the beginning of July but dropped as low as 63 during the cold weather. The cold water temps, however, didn’t throw the fish off normal patterns much, which was good. What had a bigger influence on fishing was the unsettled weather. The past few weeks were characterized by non-stop progression of fronts. Front after front after front. There was a ten-day stretch that had eight thunderstorms that hit at least part of the lake. Guests and I were fishing post-front conditions almost non-stop. The fish were still eating - they didn’t starve just because weather was unstable. But the action was hot or cold. There would be a multiple-fish day followed by a long day with barely a follow. One front in particular was a good example. There was a whopper thunderstorm in the evening and the day that followed was cold with a roaring NW wind - I fished 18 hours with only a follow. The next day has exactly the same wind and conditions; I thought it’d be another slow day but we boated a 46, 47, and 51. Other days seemed perfect but were fishless. One day I did an early morning trip with two good fisherman and we only had one lazy follow under perfect conditions - I did a night trip that same day, conditions were worse but we got a 47. During this unstable stretch it seemed that the fish were ignoring “conventional wisdom” more than ever. At times the fish were hot under classic post front conditions - bluebird sky, puffy cumulus clouds, cool, low-humidity. Other times the fishing was dead under perfect conditions. During this stretch, more than ever, you just had to go out and fish has hard as possible, and as smart as possible, and see what happened.

That was another long-winded report. I hope the update is helpful. It’s hit-or-miss. Go fishing. Fish as hard and and as smart as you can and see what happens. That pretty much summarizes musky fishing any time.