Mille Lacs has been on my bass fishing bucket list for awhile, not sure what took so long. Its only a little over 2 hours from my house and I have driven by it countless times to other tournaments and fishing trips. Well Friday things finally aligned, when I had time available, the weather was tolerable and I had someone to show me the ropes of landings and general areas of good smallmouth fishing. Mille Lacs is a big body of water and you can easily spin your wheels, so it was nice to have my buddy Bill to show my Dad & I around to get started and then we expanded on what Bill had fished before.
We launched out of Cove Bay a little after 8am, we fished a few reefs in this area. I caught a 3lb fish pretty quick on a white fluke and then a chunky walleye on a Ima Flit jerkbait. The next reef I caught 2 more smallmouth on a Chartreuse Blue Ima Rock N’ Vibe. We then headed over near Izaty’s area, where my Dad caught his first smallmouth and I picked up a 2 more on a fluke and Bill lost one on a grub. Winds got pretty gusty on the south side, so we tucked into Cove bay, where I had a couple smallmouth follows and caught 2 largemouth bass.
We trailed the boat over to Cedar Creek and relaunched because of the East wind. It didn’t take long to get more consistent action on this side. We each started catching fish pretty quickly. Getting bites on a bone colored Ima Skimmer, DT4, and various soft plastics. After a bit of pecking around on rock spots we finally hit a bit of a sweet area, where my Dad got a 5-06, Bill got a 4-06, I got a 4-01 and a few other nice fish.
After this spot went quiet, we stared looking at more new water and got on a pattern where we just wore them out on Soft Plastics. Best soft plastics were Yum Dingers, Lake Fork Craw Tubes, & Tubes. It got a little crazy after that. We all caught several nice fish in the 3lb plus range. Bill would have easily had 17lbs plus. We were weighing most of the big ones, but my scale went dead.
My Dad’s best 5 = 5-06, 5-04, 20.5″, 20″, & 19.5: for about 24-25lbs
My Best 5 = 4-05, 4-01, 3-13, 19.5″, 19.25″ for about 21lbs
Over all we had 50 plus bass, 2 walleyes, 4 northern and a couple rock bass, our best 15 bass would have been over 60lbs! Pretty awesome for a first trip to the big pond, won’t be my last! To see more pictures from trip, follow this link. This is a trip that any of us will soon forget!