Fishing Michigan

If you haven’t heard of Reed’s Sporting Goods before, no worries, they are out of Walker,  Minnesota.  They would be some what comparable to Jay’s here in Michigan.  Except Jay’s doesn’t have a website yet!

I picked up a couple of Ready Rig cases from them earlier in the year (Ice Pro Plus 38″) for my walleye rods.  Very happy with the service.  They have quite a few deals going on right now on their ice fishing gear,  and I mean all the gear.  Augers, shacks, rods and electronics.

Quite a few of the augersare on sale.  Most of the sales start off with $50 off, but there are some that go even better on the discount.  Take this 10″ StrikeMaster Lazer Mag Express,  basically the same unit that I am running while fishing for walleye.  Regularly priced $399, going for $329.  Its 10 bucks better than the sale of the 7″ auger.  Which is the size   I use for perch and panfishing and most of the time on small inland lakes.

Lots of fish housesare on sale, too.  Choose from Shappell, CLAM/Fish Trap,  and Otter.  I know this is a bit out of my price range, even at a $70 off, but I love this camo pattern from Otter.

Lots of cold weather gearis on sale too.  It really is a good time to dress up for next season,  the sale prices just do not get better than the end of the season sales.  Besides the Vexilar suit that I showed off  last month or so, I also have the blue Ice Armor from CLAM.  Its got the padding in the butt section of the bibs as well as the knees.  Both come in handy for sitting over a hole and kneeling down to yank your fish out of the same hole!  For $183.95 for both the bibs and the parka is great deal,  when I got my suit the set was going for $299.99.   The gray Extreme suit is a steal too it seems.  When its almost $350 regular price and going for $264,  its a good deal.  The suit has the same padding features, both suits are water proof, but the Extreme suit comes with its own lining system for extra warmth.  Basically you won’t have to go out and get that extra layer of fleece like I did with the blue suit.

Was surfing through after doing some running this afternoon, was really tempted to go back and take another look at Ebay, but thought better of it.  My list of things for getting ready for the spring fling is short, so I needed to add to it like a hit in the head .    Can you tell when I was really bored I added some gifs, geeze.  And if you actually know a bit less than I do when it comes to all that fancy computer jargon, that’s the funny looking smileys/icons.

What I found was just as just as bad.  Everybody had new stuff available for the upcoming season.  Frank’s Great Outdoors has added another six or so new custom colors to the line-up.  Well some are new, some are just old Hot n Tot colors that Rapala never picked up after buying out Storm.  I already  picked up a few when they were introduced a couple of months ago.  The one I think I am really going to like actually has two names on the website;  Walleye Express and Paralyzer.  I like many others in the last few years have become a purple nut, so I like the mid section of the body, for fish under the lure there is a bright red type paint, and the back through the bill is painted a sharp chartruse.

The one I was most excited to see was the return of the Blue Metallic Tiger.  This was one of my favorite Storm baits under the old regime’.  Not only was this one of my better lures out on the lake, but it was also a steady producer on the Huron River in Flat Rock for steelhead.  I let a friend borrow it one time, and the bill was almost messed up beyond tuning. 

One that I had was very similar to what is now called Mixed Veggies.  For the salmon trollers and walleye spoon guys, the name and the color pattern is familiar.  I know that a growing trend on Erie is to stick with baits that are gold or copper, but do not overlook the effectiveness of metallic silver.  It catches the sun just as well, if not better, to produce that flash while the bait shimmers back and forth across its pattern.

For trolling at night, early in the morning or really overcast days go glow.  This is a glow/green herringbone pattern.  I am not totally sure if the bait was in the original Storm lineup or not,  but I do know it was made by the many competitors who jumped into the tot business after Rapala introduced that nutty plastic bill.  I was almost convinced that this was a case of New Coke/Classic Coke, until one of the factory reps told me this was done because they wanted the bait to run truer.  That they didn’t understand the effectiveness of the side to side action for catching walleye.  There probably wasn’t enough room in the testing tank

Finally I picked this color to showcase,  Barbie.  It kind of makes one think of whacked out Wonderbread spoon, or even a Double Downer (another tot look-a-like).  Even a confusion type pattern minus the copper background.  The white background gives you another option for fishing low-light conditions.  The colors added are light enough to be seen in most conditions as well.