Fishing Michigan

Took a little while to get this entry ready, had to do a short version for the paper.  Will have a few more pictures in the blog to give a better idea of what was going on last Saturday out on the lake.  I was with a guide, but it wasnt a guided trip if that makes sense!  Steve Webb is one of the many guys who I fish the winter Ice Team tournament series with,  and he had an off day.  Steve loves to troll, gets him ready for the summer tournaments and allows some time for experimentation before it counts for money.

We got our bait over at Matthews in the morning and got a little report on what the action was like out on the lake.  We started trolling just passed Luna Pier and made our runs North and South in waters between 16 and 20 ft deep.  Steve’s buddy Joe made the trip with us and we had six lines out from the boat.  Here’s a quick pic of the inline planer boards that Webb and I both use when trolling.  You cannot see it, but there is a rod set up with a heavy bottom bouncer right off the side of the boat. between the two board rods.  We ran two sets on each side of the boat, and a bottom bouncer rod on each side, too.  Its a good method for keep all the lines from getting crossed up, as well as keeping an eye on all three at the same time.

The first fish was mine (this did not make the paper) on one of the bottom bouncer rods.  Bringing it up, we saw what was probably a 24″ walleye, that must have been dead for several weeks, perhaps as far back as ice out.  A quick shake of the rod and it fell off the hooks of the crawler harness and sank back down to the bottom.

Remember that I make my harnesses 10 ft or longer,  because the first few (phantom) bites that I had were actually clumps of zebra muscles.  To remedy this, I still let the 4 oz bottom bouncers down to the bottom, but at the end I cranked the reel up twice, just to get it a bit further off the bottom so the rig wasn’t dragging.  This adjustment resulted in several fish being taken on the bb set ups.

We switched out all the rods to crawler harnesses eventually because they were producing better than the jigs and crankbaits.  The nicest fish to come off the boards was this big 6 lb male, caught by Joe.

The fishing was hard only in the fact that we had to avoid so many boats out on the lake that day.  There was a tournament that launched out of the Detroit River, and it seems like none of the boats stayed in the river at all.  We had the tourney anglers looking at us with binoculars to see what we were doing right.  Then we had a few locals almost turning into us to follow our passes.

Webb kept us on track with his Lowrance fishfinder/GPS mapping system.  For giggles, I did the same thing with my Garmin handheld unit.  Its a good option for those with a fish finder already in the boat,  and not wanting to add any more hardware to the boat.  A great option for adding an additional fish finder to the boat, is to rig a puck transducer to the bottom of your electric trolling motor, in front of the propeller blades.  Vexilar makes the flasher units  and are easy to rig yourself.

All in all it was a good day, each of us getting a Michigan limit of five fish.  These five totaled over 25 lbs.  The other two guys probably took come home close to 20 lbs each themselves.

If you havent been yet, get your boats ready and tested.  Call up the bait shops to see where the bite is happening and GO!!!  If you dont have a boat, take one of the many charters available in the Monroe area or give Webb a shout at Trophy Charters  and you can check on rates.  Speically if you are thinking of buying a Lund of your own,  its a nice boat to fish out of.