Houghton Lake Walleye Opener

The 2007 Houghton Lake Walleye Opener was unlike the past years of sorting pike and walleye. We fished two and a half days and didn't put one walleye in the boat.

Over the weekend we fished the north side in 8FOW with 55F water temps the south side along the Elks club in 7FOW with 51F water temps the East Bay and other random spots we have marked on our GPS and only produced pike and bass.

Depending on weather condition early in the year we use a few different methods for catching walleye on Houghton Lake.

• Jig heads with leeches and half of a Berkly Gulp body. (Used around structure areas)
• Jig heads with only Berkly Gulp. (Used around structure areas)
• Trolling with 3" Bomber on North Shore 6 - 7 FOW. 1.8mph 70- foot back 8 lb test.
• Dragging Storm Deep Storm ThunderStick 20 - 30 foot of the side. (Used when drift is .7 to 1.3 mph)
• Trolling North Shore off the edges of the old river bed. Use a variety of body baits, but Rapala Tail Dancers are the best.
• Slip bobber with leeches or minnows and then casting crank baits when fish are located.
  

After visiting and revisiting many of my favorite fishing locations and only landing pike I started using my Aqua View camera to locate new fishing areas. During my observation times I only viewed two small walleye which made me rethink my fishing plan for my next trip. Along with our bad luck the other two boats in our fishing group did not catch a single walleye either.

I love fishing Houghton Lake and it's by far my favorite lake to fish walleyes on in central Michigan. I'll be back on Houghton Lake Tuesday after work and will report back.

Pounded by Pike!

Pounded by Pike!
Northern numbers on the rise

I wanted to take a moment to add this short posting about our Walleye Season Opener at Houghton Lake. I enjoy fishing Houghton Lake very much have fished this lake for over 20 years now. I have noticed an increase in the amount of small northern pike over the last few years. For anglers headed to the lake be prepared to see high numbers of Northern Pike.

We track our daily fish numbers and generate productivity ratios and trend forecasts for each lake we fish in Michigan. Northern numbers in Houghton Lake have been on the rise see our Ratios listed below for 2005 – 2007.

Average ( Pike to Walleye ) on the line count.
2005 – 15 to 1
2006 – 20 to 1
2007 – Starting ( over 70 Northern Pike first day )

Our rule of thumb ratio for 2006 was 20 to 1 – so we averaged about 20 northern pike to one walleye on the lines as we averaged the daily fish count during 2006.

This year we found a significant increase of small Northern Pike on April 28th we caught and released over 70 pike. We DID NOT catch a legal pike and most fish averaged in the 18 – 20 inch range. This will be good for future anglers and will keep people busy as they fish for Walleye.

Make a point to Get Outdoors!

Well we finally made it out fishing on the Saginaw Bay last Friday [4-20-07]. We started out looking for fish in front of the man made island and didn't mark much, so we worked our way west over toward Linwood.

We started out trolling in 9 FOW (48.5 water temp) and worked our way into 7.5 (50 water temp) FOW without any luck. During our trolling time we watched other boats cover a ton of water without any hook sets.

About 4:00pm we found an area in 8.5 FOW that we marked eleven fish ranging from 1 to 1.5 feet off of the bottom. We marked the area on our GPS and then setup to jig (metallic 1/4oz gold jig with a shiner minnow). Shortly after we started to jig we were landing walleyes. Our plan was to present our bait slowly with very little action and it worked. We boated 23 walleyes the biggest was about 6 lbs and all were males. We kept the smaller fish for our first walleye fry of the year.

Good Luck Fishing....