Update 6/12

Well, the MN musky season finally opened last weekend and already an fishing report is a bit past due.

I was on Mille Lacs for the opener and it was a cold crappy day. The water temps were only 58-60 F, which is behind schedule. The past two weeks were so cold that the water temps didn't change or maybe even dropped a bit since Memorial weekend two weeks ago. We fished mostly bays and worked shallow most of the time using surface gliders, small soft plastics, and twitchbaits. We had a couple follows and I was hooked up once but it shook off. The musky that came unpinned hit a 6" Slammer twitchbait worked fairly slow with long pauses.

The following day we were on a different Central MN lake and caught a 33 and 43. The size of the fish isn't what we were after but it was fun and it sure beats getting skunked. The fish were hitting off the edge of developing cabbage beds and both took a Mo Joe, the big brother of the Big Joe by Live Action Lures. Water temps on this much smaller lake were also 58-60. You know it's been cold when even the small lakes haven't warmed up yet.

A midweek trip produced a 41"er that hit a Talonz crankbait, I'm not even sure the name of it (Little Claw maybe?). That was mostly a trolling trip.

As usual for June, the fishing has been hit-or-miss. The cold water temps aren't helping things much. In spite of the cool water, the weed beds on Mille Lacs and the other lakes are developing nicely.

It wasn't the best opening week of all time, but it was far from the worst. It's good to be musky fishing again!!!

I have been fishing mille lacs for several years and have never came up with any colors that work better than others. What have you found, for different times of the year?

Regardless of the type of bait, it's always good to have a mix of natural colors and bright, gaudy colors. For natural colors I like cisco, perch, and sucker color combinations. For bright and gaudy I've always had the best luck with chartreuse. Blade baits, for example, I like light purple skirt with chartreuse blades during the day for a bright bait or cisco for a natural. At night I like pink/pink, all black/smoke, or cisco. Go to the Spanky Baits website and check out the Mille Lacs pack. I picked those color combinations so that'll give you an idea of what I like.
http://www.spankybaits.com/index.php?categoryID=12

I also like Jailbird (sometimes called Bumble Bee, same thing) pattern. The Red-Headed Bee Slammer Deep Minnow is one of may all-time favorite cranks on Mille Lacs.

I hope that helps.