Houghton Lake 6/29/11

12 3/4 - inch Perch hooked on a TD 7 Taildancer in 9 FOW

My nephew and I headed up to Houghton Lake yesterday at 7:30pm to try out the night bite. On our last trip to Houghton Lake we found a good concentration of walleyes holding in an area of scattered weeds in 9 to 11 FOW.   We headed back to the same spot to work on developing a trolling path around the weeds.  When building a trolling path I change the track color on my GPS when I arrive at the location so I can clearly see where my boat has been.  Then we drive the boat East and West over the area and then North and South to basically build a grid of the area we want to target.  While we are making the grid we mark weed structures that would cause trolling issues with GPS points.  Next, I change the track color and start trolling.  When we find bad spots trolling we mark them with GPS points.  After a few hours of driving the area the map starts to show a clear path around the weeds and at that point I go back and save a course.  It's a fair amount of work to develop trolling paths, but it pays off.

The fishing action was very slow for the most part.  We worked on  our trolling path during the daylight and hooked two bass, one pike, and a nice 12 3/4 - inch perch.  At dark we headed in close to the west shore and trolled in the dark without any luck at all.  The water temperature last night held at 67 F on both sides of the lake.  I suspect that the cold front and quick water cool down helped slow down the walleye bite yesterday. 

Good Luck...