ONAMIA, Minn. — Even Seth Feider was surprised by the results from Mille Lacs Lake Thursday. The Elite Series pro who knows this 130,000-acre lake better than anyone else in the Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year Championship has revised his prediction of what it’s going to take to win this three-day tournament.
After practice this week, Feider said it would be around 70 pounds. Now he’s saying 74 or 75 pounds. While that might not sound like much difference, remember this is a smallmouth bass fishery, where one pound can be the difference in 10 places in the standings.
“I probably caught 40 fish today, which is a lot more than I thought I was going to, but a lot of them were 3-pounders,” Feider said. “I only had one great big bite, and I lost it. I weighed-in like a 3 ¾-pounder.
That’s the difference in winning this tournament and being a runner-up, having a 3 ¾-pounder in your five-bass limit instead of a 6-pounder.
Speaking of differences, there are some on Mille Lacs from a year ago. You can’t see them in the results from Day 1. In the chart below, it appears the lake fished almost exactly the same as it did a year ago, and in some cases it was even better. For instance, there were “only” 23 bags weighing 20 pounds or more on Day 1 last year; there were 29 on Day 1 this year.
However, several anglers noted that the final results don’t paint a true picture of the changes from a year ago.
“It’s definitely tougher,” said AOY leader Brandon Palaniuk, who is in 19th place with 21-4 after finishing 12th last year. “When you caught 21 pounds last year, you would cull a 20-pound bag and a 19 ½-pound bag and a 19-pound bag. You just caught ‘em and caught ‘em and caught ‘em. That’s just not the case this year.
It could be just time of year. We could be here two or three weeks later, and it might be a completely different story.”
But most people, including Palaniuk, believe the fishing pressure on Mille Lacs Lake, which has increased dramatically over the past year, has changed the way this lake fishes. For instance, the place where Palaniuk and Matt Herren culled through dozens and dozens of 4-pounders last year has yet to produce a bite – a single bite – for Palaniuk this week – in practice or on Day 1 of the tournament.
“They’re just not there,” Palaniuk said. “Where we caught ‘em really good last year, those areas got a lot of pressure. It almost seems like the fish just disappear and they don’t come back. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be there. They should go to the same place the same time of year. If they get enough pressure, I guess they just don’t.”
And on the subject of fishing pressure, Feider thinks it might be less on Mille Lacs this week than anytime since the AOY Championship was held here a year ago. (If you’ve ever seen all the ice fishing shanty “parking lots” around Mille Lacs, you know fishing pressure doesn’t decrease much when the lake freezes.)
“The locals have been extremely respectful this week,” said Feider, who is from nearby Bloomington, Minn. “I think this week the lake is getting the least amount of pressure it has gotten all year.
“I probably caught 40 fish (Thursday), which is a lot more than I thought I was going to, but a lot of those were 3-pounders.”
Feider finished with 22-8 and is in a 10th-place tie with Aaron Martens. Feider won this event with a three-day total of 76-5 last year. If he’s going to hit that newly predicted winning weight of 74 or 75 pounds this year, he’s got to upgrade over the next two days.
“I need two 26-pound bags,” Feider said. “They’re in here.”
Yep, both last year and this year there are 26-pounds-plus bags of smallmouth bass swimming in Mille Lacs Lake. That’s the main reason why Bassmaster magazine named it the No. 1 bass fishery in the U.S. this year. And it seems to be holding up surprisingly well in spite of all the attention.
| 9/15/16 | 9/14/17 | |
| Total bass weighed-in | 243 | 248 |
| Total weight | 973-4 | 991-0 |
| Average weight per bass | 4.00 lbs. | 3.99 lbs. |
| Big bass | 6-1 | 6-1 |
| Big bag | 26-7 | 24-15 |
| Limits caught | 46 | 48 |
| Bags of 25 lbs. or more | 4 | 0 |
| Bags of 20 lbs. or more |
23 | 29 |
| Bags of 18 lbs. or more | 34 | 40 |