Budd Lake December 9th

The weather has been very cold here in central Michigan and the lakes are freezing fast.

Normally I'd still be bow hunting for a monster buck at this time of the year, but the deer hunting in our area is down right terrible. I have spent the last two weekends scouting deer and I can't find a track. I also have four trail cameras out in the woods and the only pictures I've got are of three bears.

With that side and out of the way it's time to talk about fishing on the ice. We made it out to Budd Lake on 12-9-07 and found 6 1/2 -inches of ice and no fishermen on the lake. I started out searching in 24 FOW on the rock piles and after drilling about twenty holes I didn't find a fish. We moved into 12 FOW and worked along the sandy breaks and found two big schools of perch. I drilled about thirty holes in a sixty yard area and we went to work catching perch.

We were using 2-lb test a small hook, minnow, and one split shot. On Budd Lake we have good succes fishing with natural bait presentations. The perch fishing was on fire from 1:00pm to 3:00pm and we landed over one hundred fish. The best fish was 13.5 -inches and the average was around 9 - inches.

Make sure you check ice conditions before you walk out on the lake.

September Walleye Trip

We didn't get a chance to fish Houghton Lake in August because we were out in Colorado bow hunting for elk and mule deer for 3-weeks so I don't have an August report. But after getting all of the hunting stuff done we made it up to Houghton Lake on (9-28) to try out a few of our fall fishing spots.

Our trip started out at 4:30pm with a very strong wind out of the NW. We headed over to the north shore and started trolling the edge of the sand bar in 7 FOW. After an hour of landing weeds and pike we picked up and headed back south to fish a spot that is normally hot in early May.

We setup with small blue / gold bomber, clown colored small bombers, and small blue tail dancers 55 and 68 foot back on 8 lb test in 5.5 FOW at a 1.9mph troll. As we made our second pass at 5:20pm we hit directly on the sand break and picked up two walleyes. We marked the spot and stated working it until we had our tenth fish at 7:45pm. The best walleye we caught was 23-inches.

When we were pulling our boat out we met up with two other fishermen who put had in two days on Houghton Lake in 7 - 10 FOW. They were drift fishing and reported that they had only caught three walleyes and a ton of pike. My suggestion for anyone fishing Houghton is to find sandy breaks and troll.

I'm not sure when I'll be back to fish Houghton because we have Michigan bow hunting and one more trip out west on (10-15).

Good Luck!

Bay Walleye Fishing Still On Fire

We fished out of Au Gre on Monday morning (7-2) and had another great fishing day out on the Saginaw Bay. This was possibly the best fishing trip we have had out on the bay in regard to the number of walleyes we landed. We fished for 6-hours and landed 52 walleyes! The fishing action was out of control making it nearly impossible to run all six fishing rods. The fish we were catching were ranged from 15 to 22 inches with a few being 24".

We fished with crawler harnesses (purple & silver), (blue & silver), and 2oz bottom bouncers back 110 feet in 30 to 35 FOW. The majority of the fish we were marking were 4' off the bottom and when we found one we found a school. GOOD LUCK.....

We have only been out on the Saginaw Bay three times since April. The good news is that all of our trips have ended with limits. I have to say that the Bay fishing is very good this year and if you work at it you can find some nice sized walleyes.

June 16th we fished from the Spark Plug east out to number 1. We fished from 6:30am - 1:00pm and put twenty walleyes in the boat. The fish were all from 15 - 21 inches. We were running crawler harnesses 4 to 6 feet off of the bottom with Berkly Gulp night crawlers at 1.5mph. The most active colors were fire tiger and blue with silver strips.

June 22nd we fished one mile north of the spark plug in 22 FOW and again had very good success. We used crawler harnesses and 2oz bottom bouncers back 100'. The fish were average size 15 -20".


June 24th we fished out of Au Gre and ended up limiting out in 5-hours. We fished from 12:30pm - 5:30pm out about 6.5 miles in 40FOW. We marked several good schools of fish and were able to capitalize on some larger fish. We ended up landing 21 fish, lost 5 and put 15 in the box. The best fish of the day was 29" followed by four fish that were 26 to 27 inches.

We fished with 1.5oz bottom bouncers and crawler harnesses off of in line boards at 1.6 mph. During our fishing we also caught fish on crawler harnesses lead by a floating rapala. When fish are feeding on meat and I find them suspended I like to rig up a floating crank bait minus the hooks in front of a 5' long crawler harness and a snap weight. This gives me the ability to put the bait at the required depth when fish are suspended. One last change I make is to change the back hook on all of my crawler harnesses to a treble hook. It doesn't effect how the bait runs and helps keep more fish on.


Good luck......

Still Catching Walleyes

I've been fishing three times since my last fishing report. I fished June 1st and landed 4 walleyes all of them were in 6FOW of the lighthouse point or as the bass fishing guys call it the bass bedding ground. We trolled the area at 1.9mph using small bomber (Red / White).

Fished again on June 10th in the same area and picked up five walleyes with one being 22" and two nice small mouth bass. Small tail dancers were the ticket.

June 13th was my last trip out and we ended up getting four walleyes all 15 - 19 inches. I'm thinking that the fishing in 5 to 6 FOW is about done. The water temp was 82-degree's F at 2 foot below the surface. On this trip we didn't catch any pike or bass which was odd.

My next fishing trip is tomorrow morning on the Saginaw Bay. We are fishing in a local tournament sponsored by the Eagles 1010. Everyone I have talked to down here in Bay City are telling me that they are slamming walleye in 16 to 20 FOW using meat at 1.6mph. I'll find out tomorrow and I'll post the fishing report by Monday.

Good luck fishing.

2007 Upper Peninsula Fishing Trip

This years team fishing trip to Michigan's Upper Peninsula was AWESOME. The fishing was the best I have seen in ten years.

We headed up to Curtis on Tuesday (5-22) and started out fishing on Big Manistee Lake at 2:00pm. We didn't even get our second rod set and we had our fist walleye and shortly after that we had another fish. Fishing was excellent on the big man, but we didn't catch any big walleyes. We fished until dark and ended up with 15 walleyes for dinner. We found that Brown colored Storm Junior Thunder Sticks, Trout colored tail dancers (at drak) and blue back with clear bottom 3 inch bombers worked great.

Wednesday we fished Autrain Lake and again limited out with 15 walleyes. The weather was OK with high winds which caused us to move to the south end of the lake. Autrain is a great walleye lake. Trolling can be hard do to the weeds, but if you can find the breaks by the weeds you will do very well. Our favorite bait on Autrain is the Storm Junior Thunder Stick trolled 45 feet behind the boat. On the outside rods we run Tail Dancers normally black and gray or trout colored.

Thursday we fished South Manistee Lake and only caught eleven keeper walleyes, but the South lake has bigger fish then Autrain and Big Man. Early in the year the best method on the South lake is to troll deep diving baits into the shallow rocks and the turn your boat out and drag the baits off of the breaks in to the 7 foot waters. The only issue with South Manistee lake is the shallow boat launches.

Friday we headed over to Forest Lake and limited out. Forest Lake was much harder to fish do to all of the logs and stumps. I would not recommend trolling in Forest Lake because of the snags and stumps. You need to pay attention when traveling the lake because of all the floating wood, rocks bars, and stumps that are close to the surface. The lake has one good launch and the fishing is great for pike and walleyes. I recommend jigging with bright colors with leeches and gulp because of the water stain. We are planning on fishing Forest again in July.

I could go on forever about how great our fish trip was this year, but to sum it up our team ended up boating 187 legal walleyes on four different lakes. We caught a lot of pike some as larger as 36 inches and a few perch. I was also surprised at the number of DNR visits we had, we were stopped on three out of the four lakes and checked out.

I'm heading up to Houghton Lake after work today. I'll report the action on Monday.

Good luck fishing.

Walleye Fishing Improving

We got out and fished on Houghton Lake Friday (5/18) & Sunday (5/20) and did very well. We caught a total of sixteen keeper walleyes on our two evenings of fishing and had six that were undersized. Most of the fish were 16" - 18" with the two largest fish being 22".Friday evening we had a gusty west wind and 62F water temps. We started fishing in 7FOW off of the light house point trolling East to West 1.75mph. We didn't have our third pole set when we picked up our first walleye on a red and white 3" bomber set back 65 foot. The walleye bite started at 7:00pm and stayed good as long as we worked the east side of the point inside 7FOW. I'm thinking the walleyes were on the point letting the wind blow the bait fish in for an easy afternoon dinner. We were also fishing after a cold front and we found our smaller baits to be the most active. We caught walleyes on small trout colored tail dancers, wonder bread color 3" bombers and red and white 3" bombers. I experimented with other baits but could only produced small pike and rock bass.Sunday started out warm with no wind, but by 7:00pm we had a strong east wind that was giving us a fun ride. We worked 11FOW out in front of the Comfort Inn and did not pickup one fish. We moved back in to our GPS marks from Friday and started picking up walleyes again on 3" red and white bombers. We fished the point for two hours before giving up at dark when the wave action had beat us down. The next fishing report will not be until June 1st because our fishing team will be up in Curtis this week to fish the big man, South man, Autrain, and Forest Lake. This is our annual start to the UP. I'll report back with the fishing action and GPS points on the lakes that produce.

Have fun fishing...

Baits That Are Catching Walleye This Week

We are starting to catch walleyes now that we have located them.

Rapala tail dancers small 2'-4' deep runners in 6.5 FOW and when we are out in 10 FOW we use the medium tail dancers that run at 8' deep. All of our trolling rods are setup with 8 lb test mono.

During the day blue / white and black / gray are working well. One hour before dark and after we are using the trout color. You will notice some of the hooks are red. We are experimenting with new hooks and only change to them after the standard hooks are destroyed by pike.

Bomber Long A minnows. We use 3" baits that dive 3' -4' when we fish in 6- 7 FOW and the walleyes are on top of the weed cover. I like to use the larger 4" minnows 2' -3' divers in the early part of the season when the fish are in shallow and feeding on larger prey. These baits make a lot of noise and have worked well for us on Houghton Lake over the years.

Typically white / red out produces all colors, but this year the 3" wonder bread color and the 4" trout color are on fire. Blue with the clear body is also a standard producer, but this year its been 100% pike pounder.
Also wanted to add a photo of the variety of Bomber Long A 4" minnows we use on Houghton Lake early in the year. We change our storage containers to the individual holders and it's working great. Quick changes are faster and no more tangled hooks. Plus if you have an empty slot you know your missing a bait.

For jigging this year and in the past 3" Berkly Gulp minnow have worked very good. When I jig for walleyes I use Berkly Gulp about eighty percent of the time. This stuff really works
well. Sometimes when the fish are slower I cut the tail off and use the
body with a leech. It seems to work. I prefer the metallic jig heads over the painted and set my weight as light as I can.

Walleyes Are Back

We found the walleyes!

My brother and I made it out fishing Sunday evening (5-13) and ended up catching nine walleyes (15" - 22") from 8:00pm - 10:45pm. We launched out of the west DNR landing and headed east to fish 7.5 FOW. Weather conditions were good with a steady South wind and 64F water temps.

We started out jigging leeches and 3" Berkly Gulp then changed over to dragging spinner rigs with night crawlers and only picked up a few pike. We changed our location and moved off of the south point and again fished 7 to 8 FOW. The steady south wind allowed us to drift along the 4 to 7 foot break and keep our baits in front of the fish but we couldn't get a bite.

Our original plan was to work small baits with a very slow presentation. We used this plan because of the cold front that moved in on Saturday night and we figured the fish would be less responsive to fast moving big baits. After working our setups for over 2 hours with no walleye activity we change over to trolling.
We setup using 3" wonder bread color bombers 2-3' deep and the smallest size trout colored tail dancers 3-4' deep on 8 lb test all back 65'. Our troll plan was to work from 8 to 6.5 FOW at 1.7mph. Before I could get the third rod set we had a pike on the line and as we were landing it our second rod went off. The walleye bite started at around 8pm and was steady until 10:45pm. All of our walleyes were caught in a 100 yard area in 7 FOW directly off of the point. We landed five fish that were under 15 inches and one perch.

I did fish Saturday afternoon for about five hours and ended up landing one 18" walleye in 5 FOW West of the Elks club. The fishing was very rough with a strong NE wind. Over all this year the fishing on the south shore along the Elks to the light house has been very slow for us.

I will be fishing Houghton on Thursday and Saturday this week and trying out my new 9.9 pro kicker....

Good luck.