Dennis Anderson: Muskies aren't too big to hide

MILLE LACS - Wednesday afternoon and evening, the wind blew here variably from the south, mostly the southeast. Anglers with muskies on their minds -- there have been few so far this early season on the big lake -- could find shelter in Cove Bay, in Wahkon Bay and in the expanse of water lying just outside the Isle Harbor.

It was midafternoon when we dropped our boat in Mille Lacs at the Department of Natural Resources landing in Isle. A dozen or so other pickups and trailers were parked there, presumably those of walleye anglers. More would appear as the supper hour approached, slip-bobber specialists who would sit atop or alongside reefs until nightfall, and beyond.

A hotshot muskie lake, Mille Lacs last summer turned a cold shoulder to the state's big-fish seekers. No one knows why. DNR test nettings last year confirmed the fish still were there -- that the Mille Lacs muskie population was healthy -- but the fish, for the most part, weren't caught.

In many cases, they weren't even seen.

"It seemed that the muskie patterns changed, and they were less likely to be found in areas where they traditionally have been found," said Rick Bruesewitz, area fisheries supervisor in Aitkin.

Always slim, our chances of hooking a muskie were slimmer still Wednesday. This spring and early summer have been cool, and water temperatures in the central part of the state are only now nudging out of the 60s. Muskies like it hot, or usually do, and by evening I'd be wearing a jacket. Not a good sign.

We scatter gunned a variety of baits over and into about 8 feet of water. Top Raiders. Double Cowgirls. Bulldawgs. Our plan was to work our way through the tackle box and see what happened. A couple of hours later we were in much shallower water, flanking our boat, eventually, by broad stands of pencil reeds. Here we launched still more baits, stuff that buzzed and thumped en route back to the boat.

"You see that?" said Max Kelley of Stillwater, one of our lure slingers.

The sighting was good news, after a fashion. Better still is that DNR test nettings this spring again found not only good numbers of muskies in Mille Lacs, but good-sized muskies.

"The biggest was about 54 inches," Bruesewitz said.

Yet questions linger: Will Mille Lacs muskies strike anglers' baits this summer, as waters warm? Will they be visible in Mille Lacs' shallows in July and August, as they have been in years past, 2008 excepted?

Bruesewitz believes an explosion in baitfish last year in Mille Lacs might have contributed to an off year for the lake's muskies and muskie anglers. Tullibees and perch were wildly abundant, and by midsummer some muskies might have followed some of these fish to the middle of Mille Lacs, Bruesewitz theorizes. Such redistribution would be unusual, and if it occurred, would account for so many muskies gone missing.

Perhaps, Bruesewitz said, muskies -- as some people believe -- move into warm, shallow water to digest food, and for reasons that perhaps correlate to the size of prey available to them in Mille Lacs last summer, they didn't have to stay in the shallows as long as they previously did.

Then again ...

As 9 p.m. approached Wednesday, we had pretty thoroughly worked our way through a couple of tackle boxes. Had it been a hot summer's night, with or without a moon, if Mille Lacs' muskies were active, the lake just then would have lit up with running lights, and from a hundred or more boats, baits would have been cast until well after dark.

Wednesday, that kind of effort wasn't warranted.

From shorelines shrouded in long shadows, the slip-bobber specialists emerged for their nightly fix of walleye fishing.

Lots of casts. No muskies.

But no discouragement, either.