ONAMIA, Minn. — Wow. If fishing is this good when it’s tough, what’s it like on a good day at Mille Lacs Lake? The weigh-in looked like a smallmouth bass slugfest with 23 five-bass limits weighing over 20 pounds, but that appearance is deceiving, according to the 50 Elite Series pros competing in the Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year Championship.
“It’s really tough right now, really tough,” said Seth Feider, who is tied for second place with 25 pounds, 8 ounces. “Fish are scattered. They’re not wadded up like they should be. It’s not cold enough yet.
“In two weeks, it will be absolutely insane here. They’re going to get even fatter as the fall moves along. All those five-pounders are going to turn into almost six pounders.”
Matt Herren, who is in fifth place with 23-14, thought Thursday was pretty insane.
“I ain’t never seen nothing like it,” Herren said. “I’ve been on the Great Lakes during the heyday. I’ve been everywhere.
“In practice, I didn’t get the number of bites I got today. They finally grouped up today for some reason. But the biggest thing I noticed in practice was that everything I caught was a 4½-pounder. I culled 14 fish over four pounds today.”
With all the superlatives being thrown out about Mille Lacs, and the facts of Thursday’s weigh-in to back them up, it’s difficult to believe these guys when they talk about the fishing being tough. But when you hear it enough, it finally sinks in.
“I’ve never caught that big a limit of smallmouth bass in my life,” said Brent Ehrler, who is fourth with 25-5. “I was ecstatic to do that today. Big ones live here. They’re not easy to catch, that’s the thing. I actually struggled in practice. One day of practice I had only one fish all day long. It’s not easy out there.”
Takahiro Omori topped everyone with a bag of 26-7. Jason Williamson took big bass honors with a 6-pound, 1-ounce smallmouth, which he said was the biggest smallmouth bass he’d ever caught.
“It’s not easy,” said Williamson, who is tied with Feider for second with 25-8. “I’m probably getting 10 or 12 bites a day. It’s one of those deals where you don’t really know if you can catch 19 pounds or 25 pounds. It’s all about getting one or two big bites that are close to six pounds. I had another one that was close to that.”
Here’s the scary thing for anyone else with designs on winning this tournament: Feider, who has more experience on this lake than anyone else, started figuring it out about mid-day. He spent very little time practicing early this week. In fact, he fished a buddy tournament Monday on Lake Minnetonka. Feider started Thursday in areas where he’d caught them in early fall previously.
“I went where they were last fall,” he said. “I ran that stuff and it just wasn’t happening. Then I kind of figured out a little something about halfway through the day and got on those transition fish. They’re not out there yet, so I started following them back to where they summer and picked them up in transition.
“That’s when I got really confident. At that point I had five good ones in the well, and I didn’t want to catch anymore. I just kind of marked a bunch of stuff on Sidescan (sonar). Stuff for tomorrow.”
Finally, there’s this:
In the opening event of the 2017 Elite Series season, last March when largemouth bass were spawning at Florida’s St. Johns River, there were 14 bags of 20-plus pounds caught on Day 1 by 110 anglers. The total number of 20-pound bags for the four-day tournament was 26.
On Day 1 at Mille Lacs, there were 23 bags of 20 pounds or more caught on Day 1 by 50 anglers. Total for the three-day tournament? Your guess is as good as mine.