Fly Fishing for Walleye in Minnesota

I managed a good night of sleep on the east banks of Lake Mille Lacs here in Minnesota.  I’m here for a college gathering with good pals that I’ve been friends with now for over 30 years.  We chased fish together all over northern Wisconsin and Minnesota back in the 80’s.  It’s a wonder any of us graduated.  But we did.  And most of us ended up alright too.

 

We do these reunions about every three years.  This time our host is Mike Neumann and we are staying at his two cottages on Mille Lacs.  Mike and I arrived last night and fished today while the rest of the crew strolled in this afternoon and a couple others come tomorrow.

 

Mike and I woke to rough conditions.  We had a steady wind at 18 mph.  It was a little unnerving when we meandered down the dock to make a plan.  Waves were crashing.  But the wind was from the northwest so Mike took us up to the Red Door launch on the northwest side of the lake.  We had some shelter but it wasn’t anything great.

 

Lake Mille Lacs has great fishing for walleye, pike, musky and smallmouth bass.  Though Mike has lived here for his entire life, he’s never caught a walleye on the fly.  Let me mention however, Mike has been dabbling with the fly only for about 5 years and its been all trout and smallmouth bass.  So our theme of this week is to catch walleyes on the fly.

 

Catching walleye on the fly comes down to a few key things.  First you find them.  They’re usually 10-20 feet down along rocky ledges and reefs.  If you know the lake and have a good map you can find the spots.  Mike has excellent fish finders on his boat.  Next you need to get the fly down to them.  I use a 6-weight rod and a Scientific Anglers WF6S Sonar line and a heavy Clouser or jig fly.  To help get even deeper my leader is a level 10 foot piece of 0X Fluorocarbon.

 

There were a few other boats on the lake.  Normally Mille Lacs is crowded but not with this hectic wind.  It took Mike and I a good hour to get sorted to handle the wind with the trolling motor and to get the hang of feeding the flies down deep.  Once we were there though we found bottom and Mike shook off our skunk with a nice quarter sized snail – ha!

 

The snail was a true sign however that Mikes Clouser was presenting along bottom.  Sure enough, it was only a few minutes after that he had his first walleye on the fly.  The first was small but before I could my phone camera away he landed another and his second one was this nice 18 incher.

 

It was like we hit the lottery from thereafter.  Once we had the trolling motor right and got the rhythm to feed our rigs down to the bottom we started catching fish.  I think the other thing that helped was the way we were stripping.  Today the best strips were long and slow along with slight up and down motion with the rod tip – basically like jigging.

 

We caught about a dozen walleyes throughout the day.  The wind never subsided but in the afternoon the sun came out.  We eased our way over some weed beds and I tossed a pike/musky rig with a big streamer tied to wire.  Nothing chased so while we were there we decided to toss the Clouser’s without wire.  You know it, I hooked a pike in an instant.

 

Normally with all the teeth of a pike and a mere 0X Flouro as a leader, the pike will bite you off quick.  But not this first pike nor a second that I caught later in the day.  Despite good fights with jumps and plenty of head shakes, I landed them both.  This says a ton for the Scientific Anglers Flouro.  The stuff is superb!

 

What wasn’t good however was the fact that we didn’t have an important pike fishing tool – jaw spreaders to help with fly removal.  Despite having my longnose pliers, I still got my thumb in the way of a tooth.  Its been awhile since I had my blood pouring all over from a fish.  I guess I deserve it every once in a while.

 

By 6 PM some of the guys were settled into Mike’s camp so we headed in early.  They all felt it was too windy to come out so they kicked back and played bean bag and drank beer all afternoon.  Andy Thompson went as far as to bring along his custom barbeque and about 20lbs of ribs.  To say we set down for an evening feast is an understatement.

 

Its great to be here in Minnesota with some of my best friends.  We don’t get to see each other that often but we’re like brothers.  And I think my brothers are all about to do more fly fishing then they’re used to.

 

It’s time for bed and miraculously its only midnight.  I suspect we’re getting old.  But we’re smart enough to know there’s more fish to be caught in the morning.  Stay tuned. . . . . .

 

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing