No matter the bite, Mille Lacs still magic

MILLE LACS — Early last century, when roads leading here from the Twin Cities were little more than ruts, and no one owned a car that could pull a trailer, "boat trains" snaked onto this big lake, two anglers to each rented craft, one boat tied to the next, the lot of them towed by a lead boat that was powered by a vintage, sputtering outboard.

Further back in history still, Chippewa and Dakota encampments encircled Mille Lacs. Their villagers tapped maples for syrup in spring, then netted fish for drying before settling in for long summers along the shores of a lake that still today among inhabitants and visitors alike invokes memories and inspires dreams.

Malmo. Wealthwood. Garrison. Isle. However different the histories of these modern Mille Lacs burgs, they share common views of the big lake. Sometimes wild and foamy with whitecaps. Sometimes dead calm. Mille Lacs today remains Minnesota's premier fishing water, a fact not lost on me the other late afternoon.

I dropped my boat into Mille Lacs at the public access near Garrison. The parking lot was a quarter-full with pickups and other rigs, various sporting-affiliation stickers on their windows and empty trailers affixed silently behind. This was in contrast to the same time a year ago when parking spots were unavailable at this or other Mille Lacs launch sites, so good was the walleye fishing.

The afternoon was warm and hazy. I worked first southward along the shoreline, casting for smallmouth bass. Scaup and other ducks have overflown Mille Lacs in autumn for perhaps 18,000 years, since the time the lake was formed from melted glacial waters. Nearly as long, red and gray squirrels have scampered among its shorelines and ovenbirds, sparrow hawks and eastern wood pewees have perched among its trees. You can't appreciate Mille Lacs' natural history if the fish are biting; you're too busy. But if you have some time on your hands, casting and casting but not catching, and you have at least a faint knowledge of the way things have been here, you keep your eyes open.

I alternated crankbaits with tube jigs, swinging for the fences with each, while the sky held fast its afternoon heat.

Father Hennepin in 1680 when he first visited Mille Lacs called the place Louisiana in honor of King Louis XIV, a moniker that apparently didn't impress the Dakota, who held the good priest captive awhile, sending, as they did, the Louisiana nickname downstream from Mille Lacs, through its outflowing Rum River and eventually into the Mississippi and to the Gulf Coast.

I threw tube jigs onto a rock pile that rose to 12 feet deep from 18. The intent still was to entice a smallmouth bass to open its smallmouth mouth. These fish have shown up in Mille Lacs in the last decade or so in sizes so large they require fishing-report stenographers to learn new strokes on their keyboards. Five pounds. Twenty-two inches.

On my third cast I was startled when a muskie appeared a few feet from my boat, near the surface. The fish seemed to stretch about a third of the length of my boat. Pursuing big muskies has become a Shakespearean-like obsession among many Mille Lacs anglers. The thrill, in part, is in the sighting of these big fish, which like beautiful women oftentimes can appear close but inevitably are headed to other places. In the pursuit thereof, irony quickly blossoms, with occasional hookups only encouraging more generally obsessive pursuit. Happiest, it seems, are those muskie anglers who never quite succeed.

Shadows grew longer on the shorelines, and I really wanted to fish for walleyes. I set a course for Eight-Mile Flat, drawing the boat up on plane and feeling a rush of fresh air against my face. I flew by perhaps a half-dozen launches, or charters, sitting atop different rock piles and mud flats as the lake's middle came into sharper focus. Sometimes groups book entire launches. But most times strangers stand shoulder-to-shoulder on these big boats, watching bobbers and hoping for walleyes.

I wanted a few walleyes for myself. The freezer at home was devoid entirely of walleyes, and I have noticed a correlation between the rise and fall of these supplies and the esteem with which my family holds me, however tenuous my toehold there anyway.

I slid a sinker onto my line and tied on a swivel and a long snell, with a gold spinner. I baited a red hook with a leech and lowered the rig into the water. The depth varied but generally hovered around 16 feet. Then I placed the rod in a holder while I reached for the bow and stern lights, illuminating them against the coming twilight, and settled in, the boat propelled by its bow-mounted electric trolling motor.

Ten minutes passed. I felt a tap and let the line go. And more line. And more still. Finally I flipped the bail, spun the reel handle a few turns, and tightened the line, pointing my rod tip backward, toward the boat's stern, as I did.

Now all boats toward the middle of Mille Lacs shone their running lights like beacons. The lake was as flat as ice as the thunderheads that seemed so distant before now parked themselves immediately above the water. Sunlight streamed through these heavy clouds at angles that seemed as random as a gambler's luck.

I set the hook. My rod bowed and I felt the fish.

Darkness settled lower, and I knew once more I was on Mille Lacs.

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com