Bass Opener Sun. 5/27/07 Mille Lacs

No skunk for me. My only Larry of the day.

Solid Smallie caught on our first reef. 18"+!!!

2nd and last smallie followed quickly on the heals of the first. (I think this is the same fish as the first pic.)

The Story: I met "Shake" Michael "Cyberfish" Thompson and "Bake" Jack Halverson at the Wahkon Park access just after 10am. It was cool bright and sunny with a brisk wind out of the NW; the wind would diminsh throughout the day, thank goodness. Upon boat launch we headed a short ways West of the launch and anchored due to the wind. Shake had hammered the panfish in this spot the previous weekend. I was fishing the reeds for Largemouth Bass with a white swim jig and Chart/White Spinnerbait. Shake and Bake were fishing panfish plastics under bobbers trying for monster Crappies and Gills. Bake got on the board first with a 10" Crappie. Neither Bake nor Shake could follow that fish up with anything. For the next couple of hours we worked ourself East along the reed bed anchoring up because of the wind; During this time Mike caught a little perch and one small bass and I got the Largemouth pictured above with the swim jig. I did miss two strikes on the swim jig, one probably from a bass and the other from a dogfish right under the boat. The fishing was not happening in the shallows at all, so we tried out a little bit farther; the wind had layed down significantly by now. On the trip farther out we saw a big smallie, but that was about it.

With the wind down we decided to hit some reefs out by Half Moon and the Twin Islands. It didn't take long and I landed a big 18"+ smallie on the Chart/Wht spinnerbait (pic above). Shortly after that fish I landed another smallie that was a little smaller. Shortly after that Bake landed a nice smallie and we thought we were off to the races. We worked the reef for another hour to hour and a half without getting anything. We tried the reef running West from Upper Twin and got nothing there. We headed back in to Wahkon to see if the panfish had moved in shallow with the warm sun and less wind. Mike caught 1 crappie and a couple of perch, but that was it. We decided to pull out and give Isle Bay a try.

Isle Bay showed us some sight fish: a couple of big muskies, 1 crappie, 1 Dogfish. We didn't catch anything. We then tried the Malone Island Reef for some smallies and got nothing. We tried one reef farther out than called it quits around 8:30PM. All in all a very slow day, but I was happy due to the two nice smallies I caught.