# Rockmans Report / Mille Lacs



## ROCKMAN (Jun 28, 2004)

Check out the photo album for some great shots of the waterspouts on the lake on May 4th. There are some great pics.

The weekend was a little bit better than last weekend. Water temps are starting to get into the lower 50s. The fishing is starting to pick up out in 21 to 24 ft of water out in front of the resort. Vineland Bay is starting to give up some fish also on lindy rigs and leeches or minnows out in 16 to 21 ft of water. I have heard a few guys are getting some fish on the sand up on the north end of the lake on lindy rigs and minnows. Some of the guys were pulling large leather back minnows out of Malmo and doing fairly well as well as garrison reef. There are not a lot of numbers as of yet, 4 to 6 fish per day. Hopefully that will all change with some warmer more stable weather. It has been a weird season as far as seeing fish on the screen at their normal haunts, or even down on the bottom were they should be. I think that as the water warms up that will all change. I was out on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night on the reef and there are more fish being caught every night. Try bobbering up with fat heads instead of leeches, it seems to be a better bite on the minnows as the water is still curling up the leeches. The dock bite has been slow ever since the weather has turned cold. Something else to try is trolling over deep water on planer boards with a deep running #5 shad rap. The fish are just not down on the bottom where you would normally think they would be. They seem to be in the upper 10 ft of the water column from what I saw on Saturday, which is hard to see if you are going over the top of them with your boat motor. They are spooked long before you could ever see them on the graph. I was using my electric on Saturday out over some of the deep-water gravel in 26 to 28 ft and started to mark fish just 8 to 10 ft down. They were some very distinctive walleye hooks. Of course I did not have any crank baits in the boat so I could not try out the crank baits then, but I will do it this week. If you can get out this week, try it and pull them as slow as you can 1.0 mph or slower with the colder water. I have looked all over the place for fish, and they seem to have disappeared from the bottom third of the water column. With millions of walleyes in the lake they do not just disappear, I think that we just get stuck in our old ways and do not try stuff that we would normally think was just plane crazy to try. When they are not always where we think they should be, it is time to try something different. I will be going out this week to try out the trolling theory 8 to 10 ft down on plainer board. Whether it works or not I will definitely post it on the web. With memorial weekend coming up, hopefully the weather will level out and warm up the water so we can do some serious catching of some serious hogs.

Be safe

We will see you

When we see you

Rock


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