BASS DESTINATIONS

With a few weeks until the next club event, I had a little time to investigate some "exotic" Bass locations throughout the mid-west. My brother lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota so I packed up the family fathers day weekend and headed west to spend some time with relatives and explore the bass fishing. Minnesota is unbelievable with the number of lakes and rivers that are present but we decided on Mille Lacs which many consider the best inland walleye lake in the world.

Mille Lacs is located about 90 miles north of Minneapolis and it's huge, about 130,000 acres. It is was formed during the last ice age and has characteristics of many canadian shield lakes with it's clear waters and rocky makeup. But with its immense size and dozens of islands, reefs and points, it seemed pretty intimidating. After a little map study we picked a good starting spot and it took about 2 hours before we figured out how to catch the smallmouth but when we did it was nothing short of awsome.

The key was finding big boulders in a little deeper water, off of the rock reefs and islands, and that's where most of the fish were hanging out. Water temps were around 64 and I believe most of the fish were on beds next to the boulders. We were able to duplicate this pattern pretty much anywhere we went as long as the boulders were present. We ended up catching approximately 25-30 smallmouth and 90 percent of the fish were 3 pounds or better. Nothing giant, I think the biggest was 3.9 but it was amazing how few small fish we caught. Mille Lacs is catch and release only for bass with one fish over 21" allowed for harvest per day. We caught fish on anything we wanted to as long as we were in the right areas. The highlight of the day was when I had four bites on four consecutive casts with a topwater. So if anyone is in the great state of Minnesota and wants to catch 3 pound smallmouth all day long, give me a call and I can set you up with gps coordinates for Mille Lacs. This will become an annual trip for me.