There’s early evidence of what the pros were saying yesterday about Mille Lacs being a different lake this year. You’re seeing plenty of 2- and 3-pound smallmouth bass catches on the BASSTrakk Twitter feed, but not the number of 4s and 5s that were caught a year ago.
The point is Mille Lacs is still really, really good. But a year ago, it was off the charts. For example, on Day 2 last year BASSTrakk indicated Matt Herren landed 33 bass weighing a total of 120 pounds, 11 ounces.
“When I came in, everybody said, ‘Is BASSTrakk right? Ain’t no way.’ I said, Oh, yeah, there is,’” Herren said at the weigh-in, after his best five weighed 24-9 putting him in second place with a two-day total of 48-7. Herren weighed every one of them on a digital scale, looking to cull up an ounce or two.
“The smallest fish I caught weighed three pounds, and I only caught one of those. Everything else weighed 3.89 to 4.50. They all looked the same. It was fun.”
Said Casey Ashley last year, “I probably culled 20 pounds twice today with four-pounders. It was every cast for a while. It’s crazy.”
We’re just halfway into Day 1, so the jury is still out on the bass fishing at Lake Mille Lacs this year in comparison to last year. But it appears the pros weren’t sand-bagging when they spoke yesterday about this being a different lake.