What a Fishery! What a Day!

Sometimes things just come together!  This past Friday Keane and myself hit up the big pond again for my second time of the week.  We had the same game plan in mind as I had a couple of days earlier, only this time we were able to follow through with our plan.  We hit the water by 4:45 and had every intention of landing some Muskies.  The only problem was that the 44 degree air temps that we arrived to just made the muskies jaws lock up.  As the sun rose higher, they came out from all depths and sat on the calm surface to soak up all the possible sun.  We only had 3 legitimate follows in our first 3 hours of casting, and we saw at least 15 others that were just laying logs on the surface.  When this happens on that lake, it truly means that it could be a long day.  Our mistake on this outing was the fact that we weren't casting our baits in the middle of the full moon light at night.  These fish were apparently eating so heavily throughout the middle of the night with the full moon, that they turned extremely mellow during daylight hours.  If given the opportunity, we would have done this night fishing, but it will have to wait for the next trip.  I will however give a "shout out" to my good buddy Muskie Mike who was able to capitalize on this Midnight bite over the last couple of nights of landing fish in the complete darkness. 

With the conditions turning sour on the Muskies, and the wind laying down low, we were able to turn our tactics to the other great fish in this lake and make it one of those days that will always be remembered in our minds.  One of the great things about Mille Lacs for me is that I have a couple of spots on this lake that when the conditions are crappy for Muskies, I can go and catch huge smallies and walleyes.  The best part about it, is that I sight fish the giants! Yes that's right, I have a couple of locations where I know they move shallow enough to see the large schools of white tips (walleyes) and the blacker than night jumbo football smallies.  It is probably the coolest fishing that I know of, and what makes it even better, is that all the fish in these spots are huge.  I am serious when I say that the average size of the walleyes that we catch there are over 25 inches.  The smallies aren't too shabby themselves, and 19 and 20 inchers are quite common.  On this particular day, we landed 4 walleyes over 28 inches, with our largest topping out very close to 29.  I'm not sure how many we landed in total, but it was absolutely non-stop action with the Smallies and Eyes.  The average size walleye for the day would have to be at 26 inches.  In fact, we only had 3 fish that we thought would be under 20 inches, and when we measured them, we had to chuckle because they would be 22 or 23 inches.  What a tough problem to deal with.  The smallies were slammin as well, and we topped 19 inches several times with numerous doubles.  We could have taken hundreds of photos, but I think you get the point from the few that I will show.  What a great day to be on the water.  Even though we didn't catch any muskies, when you land that many trophy caliber fish in one day, you have to just sit back and enjoy every single battle.  It truly is one of those amazing sites to be seen, and I am fortunate yet again to watch my years of searching on that lake to pay off as well as they did.  Thanks Keane!  Until next time fellas, Keep on Livin the Dream!