Fishing at its Best in Michigan

Summer has un-officially started and the Bass and Walleye fishing in Michigan is at its peak. This upcoming weekend should be ideal if the weather holds out. Here are some pics and tips on how we got the job done last weekend on a small inland lake near Alpena, MI, last weekend.

Troll for Walleye

Saturday morning we started by trolling stickbaits (Storm ThunderSticks http://bit.ly/aJpeUj color 122) along steep drop-offs. We Zig-zagged back and forth over the drop-off to present the bait between 17 and 10 fow. I set the Minn-Kota to 2 and alternated the speed up to 3 for short bursts of 10-15 seconds to activate strikes. This Wally came off the deeper side of  the drop-off and tried to swallow the bait sideways. Johnny fought him for nearly 5 mins before we could get it in the net. He hooked this monster around 7 am which measured 28.5″ and weighed 7 lbs. Trolling also produced a small pike and another nice eater walleye around 20″.   

Cast for Bass

Sunday morning the plan was to sight cast for bass on their beds. It’s a Memorial Day tradition in Northern Michigan. But unseasonably warm weather pushed the bass off the beds a bit early. So we adapted our strategy. Texas rigged green pumpkin and watermelon candy Brush-Hogs (http://bit.ly/datXOO ) did the trick. We held the boat over deeper water (15-17 feet) and casted the hogs along weedbeds and other structure. Working the bait slowly down the drop-off produced both Largemouth and Smallmouth bass. The steeper the drop-off, the more fish we found.

As John was reeling in a Largemouth another bass chased it up to the boat. When we netted him the chaser swam off. I casted out in the direction the “chaser bass” was traveling and hooked into it.

The smallies were loving the Brush-hog too. This smallmouth was caught cruising open water between two big weedbeds. Once the water warmed up we started catching more bass in the open as they left the protection of lilly pads to feed along the drop-offs.

Two factors really worked in our favor to catch fish this weekend. 1. The weather. Clear skies really let us visually scour the flats for bedding bass and judge the depth of the water to troll where we needed to. 2. We had two mornings to fish. On Saturday we patterned fish holding to vertical drop-offs. Targeting flats next to these drop-offs resulted in big bass the following morning.

Bass Report from Lake St. Clair

While I was up-north, my buddy Dusty was wearing out the Smallies and few Largemouth on Lake St. Clair using jerkbaits. He managed a bonus Muskie as well.

Good luck this weekend and come on back to the site to let me know how you did and what’s working for you.