I must admit trolling crank baits is my favorite way to fish for walleye on Houghton Lake. But the one thing I have not become these days is close minded to other forms of walleye fishing. Last night I had the pleasure of fishing with two gentlemen who regularly fish Houghton Lake using a technique that they call Rip-Jigging. To summarize the setup you rig a 3/8 oz or heavier flat style jig head with a minnow body imitator, we used Berkley Gulp shad. To swim the bait you use a sharp rip movement back 6 to 12 inches every 5 seconds or so while keeping your rod parallel to the water. The advantage to this method is that you can work the bait over the weeds as the boat moves along with the wind. While the setup is similar to vertical jig fishing the focus is to swim the bait where as standard vertical jigging tends to promote bouncing the bait off bottom 12 to 18 inches. This method of jig fishing is very enjoyable, easy to do and well suited for Houghton Lake style fishing.
Last nights fishing report was not so hot. We started out fishing on the West shore in 7 FOW focusing on the break areas. The wind was bad and at times we were drifting at 2.4 mph which made for fast fishing. We fished hard and covered a lot of areas, but the net result was one small walleye after two hours of fishing. With the jig bite slowing we changed gears and moved to the South shore to troll and get a break from the wind. The slow bite continued on the South shore and after much effort we called it a night at 11:45pm. Overall we caught six walleyes one of which was a keeper and one nice 13.25-inch crappy. I had a great time and I learned a bit about rip-jigging, which I will use a lot on my trip to Forest Lake this summer.
I’ll be out Friday morning and if the weather holds I’ll be on the North Shore looking for walleyes.
Good Luck……
I read you report every week love all the info & pitchers, We have a cabin in St helen fish houghton lake eveytime we get a chance, in the spring we fish the middle grounds or south shore just noth of dnr boat ramp, veay slow until the water warms up, we fish crawler harness & leech rigs 1.0 to 1.3 was wondering what works best this time of year and were to go? any info would be geatly appreciated!!
ReplyDeleteGot_walleye@yahoo.com
Great to hear from you! The south shore is a great early season walleye area. I like to fish directly in front of the DNR launch from 5 to 7 FOW. You will find a lot of sand and minnows which will also hold walleye early in the year. I recommend you try using smaller crankbaits trolled 1.9 to 2.35mph. The advantages are that you can cover more ground and locate feeding walleye, plus you match the food source.
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