The Adventures of Guru and Bob....
Travis Frank
Yesterday I was the fortunate soul to spend the day on Mille Lacs with two awesome fisherman named Guru and Bob. As you can see from the picture, our quest to get this Kentucky born man a few walleyes was well accomplished. He is holding one of the doubles that we had with both walleyes being in the 26-27 inch range. In fact that was the very large majority of our catch for the day. We probably caught over 20 walleyes throughout our day on the water that were over the 25 inch mark. I think our average had to be 26 inches, but we failed to top the 28 inch mark. A few times we thought we had done it, but 27 and 3/4 was all we could get. Absolutely insane when you look at August and think about fishing for walleyes. It just isn't suppose to be that way....or is it. The pattern that we used was simply the same pattern that I found while on a muskie fishing trip with my fishin buddy Dusty about 7 years back. It's crazy, but the hotter it gets, the bigger the fish seem to be and larger the schools. Simply great walleye fishing wherever you go.
I would say that it was a relaxing time of catching very above average walleyes, but it was far from it. There was not one single point during that outing that the 3 of us felt that we could comfortably stand up without being thrown out of the boat. The wind yet again was howling with force. The only difference this time was that we put all sanity behind us and went to where the fish were anyway. I managed to get my spike stuck in a large enough boulder and let out enough rope that the boat was able to ride over the 4 - 5 - 6 - whatever size those giant waves were, and keep us over the right spot. Anchoring was the only option this time, because there was no chance of keeping us in position with the trolling motor. The schools are definitely in certain spots that are typically no more than 15 - 20 feet large. And for those of you who know about the "love Rock," yes it was kicking them out again, only now the name might just be called "BobRock!" Once Bob got dialed in on the sunken giant boulder, there was no stopping him.
It was funny because Bob braced himself up against the back seat and didn't move from his position the entire time. He simply would set the hook, battle his fish from his perch, I would net it, unhook it, release it, hand him a leech, and he would do it all over again. This sounds like a lot of work, but it couldn't have been any more enjoyable, or done any other way. We could have taken several nice photos, but it just wasn't worth keeping the fish out of the water that long and risking going overboard. Unfortunately the wind meant that Guru would be doing more watching than fishing, due to his current hip situation, but he still claims that he was having more fun watching us monkeys run around the boat catching fish than he would have if he were fishing. We were kinda limited to moving from spot to spot, and only fished two Willie holes and one Smallie spot for the day. Granted, they were my two favorite spots, and the action was continuous. We caught two Smallies that were both respectable fish, and called it a great day just after lunch time.
As you can see from some of the pictures we took, the waves were quite intense! It is really hard to capture this wave action on still photos, but these are a couple of the examples. They sure don't grow them like that around the cities!
I am waiting on more pictures to show up for this beastly 54 incher from this mornings guide trip. You just have to check back soon to see the monster from this morning! Until then, here is a taste!