Houghton Lake Walleye Opener 2012

Calm water at 7:00pm

We had a great time fishing Houghton Lake on the walleye opener.  The morning was cold and the NE wind made fishing a little challenging.  Working with the wind we fished the South shore from the Limber Lost to the Heights  targeting 5 to 7 FOW along the weed edges.  We started out by trolling a slower presentation at 1.6 to 1.8 mph with TD 5 tail dancers, thunderstick jr, and 3-inch bombers without any luck.  On our second run we changed to TD 7 tail dancers and Berkeley flicker shads trolled at 2.0 to 2.3 and hooked four small pike and then a walleye at 11:20am.  We hooked our second walleye at around 2pm in 6 FOW South of the Elks Club on a white thunder stick and then the bite stopped. 

At 3:00pm we headed to the boat launch to cook lunch and meet up with the rest of the fishermen.  The reports were all the same.  Cold water, floating weeds, and a slow bite.  Out of five boats only two walleyes were hooked and not much else.  Our friend Joe who guides for Cal Stier's www.nofishnofee.com had a slow day on the south shore, but did note that they found walleyes in the channels while pan fishing on Friday. 

We started our afternoon fishing trip at 4:30pm and continued fishing the South Shore.  The wind died off and the water temp held at 48 F the rest of the afternoon but the bite never improved on the South shore.  We hooked two walleyes at 7:40pm and that was it.  After fishing all day we hooked four walleyes and a lot of small pike.  The weather and floating weeds didn't help, but overall it was great to be back on Houghton Lake. 

Good Luck...

Afternoon walleyes South Shore 6 FOW

Saginaw Bay 4/13/12

Mike "Elk Hunter" with the first fish of the day.

It's a great time of the year to get some early walleye fishing in before all of the lakes open up at the end of April.  We fished out of Bay City on Friday and had a great time searching for walleye.  Started our day fishing near the mouth of the Saginaw River and didn't find any active fish.  At noon we headed North of the State Park about 2 miles and trolled in 15 to 18 FOW.  The bite was very slow and ended up hooking three females that hadn't spawned out, we released them.  Best action was on tail dancers green, red, blue.  

3" Magnum Report Detroit River

Rich with a nice walleye

Over the weekend my uncle  came down to try out some Detroit river spring walleye action. We met up after work on Friday and hit the Trenton channel for the afternoon  strike and picked up a couple fish, one was in 13 fow on the drop off at north end of humbug island and one was in 9 fow on the glass house drift. We also had a couple fish lost at the side of the boat and a lot of short strikes. Saturday started at the same area and found lots of disappointed fishermen, so we worked our way north to mud island and great lakes steel. Fished in all depths and only got a couple strikes along with everyone else. We didn't see a single fish landed in those areas so we headed up to Bellanger park and finally found some fish. We drifted in 46 fow at the mouth of the Rouge River and picked up 2 nice fish and lost a few as well. All in all we had a great time fishing and I got to show my uncle how we do it Detroit River style. By the way my big fish was 28" and 8lb-12oz. Not bad.


-Rich

Earl with his first walleye of the year