This weekend was another great time on Mille Lacs.  My brother and I headed out on a mission to catch some big fish while trolling leadcore line.  On Saturday it took awhile to locate some active fish, but once we found them we were able to just keep circling back over the fish.  As the storms were moving in, the fish really went crazy and we had 3 doubles.  Most of the fish were 21-24 inches, and the biggest was just under 27.

On Sunday we tried a new area.  The goal was to make a long pass trolling over multiple mud flats and then the open area between them.  We marked a lot of fish on the flats, but never got a bite.  All of the fish we did get to bite, were off of the blats atleast a few hundred feet.  We switched up baits and went over a couple of the flats again, but still no takers.  Eventually we zeroed in on a school of fish about a ¼ mile off of some structure and just kept working them over.  Interestingly, in this area we caught a mix of fish from 12 inches up to 26 inches.  I never seem to get small fish out here especially hitting big baits 10 feet off of the bottom.  In the afternoon we worked some shallower shoreline breaks and picked up a bunch of perch and a couple small walleyes, but the action was much slower.

The pattern that worked the best for us was a Deep Tail Dancer size 11 with 30 feet or fluorocarbon leader and 3-4 colors of lead depending on where I was marking most of the fish.  It also pays to switch baits if things aren’t working.  When it was cloudy, they wanted bright colors and on Sunday when it was clear more natural white/silver/blue/purple colors worked best.  A number 4 blue/chrome Salmo Hornet caught all of the fish on the shoreline break.