New to Bass Fishing on Mille Lacs

Hey Guys! I have never fished bass on ML but I am constantly hearing stories about it. This year I’m gonna give it a shot. Any tips on what techniques to use and what general structure to look for?

Thanks

Green bass or brownies?

Drop shot by the rocks.

Wacky style senko is a good place to start for smallies, if your going bucket mouths I am no help to you. Try anything a bass would eat on any other lake. Rocks on shore early to 18 ft rock reefs mid summer.

Yup, find the rocks. I haven’t targeted them but have caught plenty while walleye fishing. Your favorite type of plastic fishing works, mine have come on a jig and chartreuse moxie or lindy rig with a big minnow (shiner, sucker etc).

Tube jigs on the rocks. Early season you can site fish them in very shallow water. Green and pumpkin with gold glitter gets the job done.

-J.

1/4-3/8 oz tubes, 1/4-1/2 oz dropshots, 1/8-1/4 oz jig/grub, small-profile deep-diving crankbaits, small swimbaits (3-4″), and jerkbaits are my favorite lures to use out there.

Five lessons I’ve learned:

If the wind is over 9-11mph, stay home. Period. The fish can bite really well in the wind, but it’s not a lot of fun dealing with 3-foot rollers. There’s zero protection from the wind and waves, and the distances one must travel from A to B are measured in miles.

The fish form tight schools, so if you’re not catching them, move to another reef after 15-20 minutes. You can fish 10 reefs out there without more than a handful of bites and then find hundreds of aggressive fish on the 11th reef, which looks exactly the same as the first 10. As such, the fishing is boom/bust.

In late-June, there is a massive bug hatch. There will be slicks of them on the surface of the water. The fishing is really tough during this period, and the fish are on the move to deeper haunts, as well.

After they move deep, the big ones tend to be in the 18-22 FOW range, deeper than 99% of Minnesota bass anglers are used to fishing.

Small profile baits outperform bigger baits. Just because the bass look like pigs doesn’t mean they eat like them.

That’s good advice about staying home if the wind is over 11mph, oh, wait a minute, the wind is always over 11mph here. It is a big lake with more spots to fish than your GPS has waypoints. I would be willing to bet a months pay that it will not be uncommon to see multiple boats fishing the more popular spots where you will need to take a number to fish it, just like the muskie fishing was 5 or so years ago. Stop in at lundeen’s bait and he will let you know what is working when you are here. Good luck and don’t be afraid to keep a few of the smaller ones, they taste just as good as the walleyes do.

Bass thumb pretty much nailed it. With the exception of the wind. I would go see for yourself what you are comfortable with in your boat. A 10-15 MPH wind is perfect in my eyes.

puddlepounder wrote:

That’s good advice about staying home if the wind is over 11mph, oh, wait a minute, the wind is always over 11mph here. It is a big lake with more spots to fish than your GPS has waypoints. I would be willing to bet a months pay that it will not be uncommon to see multiple boats fishing the more popular spots where you will need to take a number to fish it, just like the muskie fishing was 5 or so years ago. Stop in at lundeen’s bait and he will let you know what is working when you are here. Good luck and don’t be afraid to keep a few of the smaller ones, they taste just as good as the walleyes do.

Jim Lundeen couldn’t care less about smallmouth bass or the anglers chasing them. He can’t make any money from them. He and his wife have much better information in regards to walleyes.

It’s been a few weeks but I have been dragging small black maribo jigs or ned rig’s in 6-8 foot. Mille Lac is mostly sand, so you need to be somewhere so your bait can get caught in the rocks. If your not able to get caught in the rocks, your in the wrong area. What I do is using my electric, drag the bait behind me (like trolling), then when I start to see a rocky area, slow down and fish it deeper until the rock goes back to sand. Then I keep going until I find another area like that. I’ve found that Smallies stay much shallower then most people fish them, That’s not to say that Myr Mar or Garrison reef doesn’t hold fish.