Houghton Lake Walleye Report 4-27-10

Fished Houghton Lake Tuesday after work and had good success on the North shore. The windy conditions and cold weather made it possible for me to get a great parking spot at the launch because I was the only guy on the lake last night. I headed out of the South launch at 5:35pm and found that it was impossible to fish the South shore with the strong North West wind blowing me off course, so I headed across the lake to long point. I started in 7 FOW and trolled East working into as shallow as 5 foot and then out into 9 foot. Fishing was a bit on the slow side, but I did manage to catch seven walleyes three of which I kept for dinner. I caught most of my fishing by trolling my baits from the shallow areas 4 FOW out to 7 FOW. All of the walleyes I caught had small “perch bait” size minnows in their stomachs. This is a good tip for those looking for walleyes on HL find the minnows and you will normally find walleyes.

Good Luck…

Houghton Lake Walleye Report 4-24-10 "Opening Day"

The weather could have been better, but the fishing was just fine on Houghton Lake for the start of the 2010 walleye season. I started the season this year on my own and opted to fish the setup on the South shore to use the East wind to guide the boat. Got setup by 9:00am and had my first legal walleye on a blue and silver TD 5 taildancer at 9:30am. The best action was on smaller minnow baits (shadraps, minnow raps, taildancers) tolled back 57 ft in 4 to 7 FOW. I took lunch at 1:00pm and picked up my fishing partners for the afternoon. We spent three hours testing a few new fishing areas without much luck and at 6:00pm we headed back to the South shore. Overall we caught 10 keeper walleyes the best being 19.5-inches and put back 4 undersized fish. The pike action was nonstop and we boated what seemed like a million hammer handles.

Had fishing friends on the West shore pull a three man limit by 2:20pm and friends on the North Shore boated 6 walleyes before dark fishing in 7 FOW tolling bombers 70 ft back.

Budd Lake Report: Old Joe and Jim picked up a nice 24-inch walleye jigging on the East shore at 7:45am.
Good Luck…..

Bad Weather Conditions

 

Cold temperatures and high winds keep us from fishing the Saginaw Bay Saturday morning. We made the best of the bad weather and went out scouting our deer hunting areas. The scouting trip started out great when we found an antler with five points our first thirty minutes in the woods. The buck that dropped this antler will be fun to hunt this fall. As we made our way around the hunting area we found a new bottleneck and eighty-one mushrooms.

Tippy Dam

Mark with his first steelhead.  Caught at Tippy Dam.

3" Magnum report

On the lower detroit river weather has been the center of my attention the past couple weeks. Temp swings from 35 to 80 degrees making the walleye staging slower than last year. The fish are there but only biting @ certain times then shutting down all together like someone turned off the switch. Easter morning I witnessed an absolute feeding frenzy from 8:30 till 9:15, almost every boat in line south of the point picked up fish for a short time then it shut down all together. Everyone scattered to find fish in deeper water but it was a fruitless effort. They are also turning on in mid to late afternoon and after dark. The wyandotte area anglers are finding fish staging in typical areas with better succes than trenton chanel.
Key colors this week are chartruse, orange and white.
Gentlemen "keep your poles wet and if it smells like fish its a good thing" good luck!
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Saginaw Bay Walleye

We had a great trip out on the Saginaw Bay on Friday (4-2). 

Walleye #4

Nice 25-inch walleye caught on a Rapal Taildancer 20-foot diver 9 (blues / silver / red) back 75 foot. 

Walleye # 3

Paul's first walleye of the year.  Caught on a Rapal Taildancer 20-foot diver back 75 foot. 

Walleye #2

Rapala Taildancer 20-foot diver trolled back 75 foot. 

Walleye # 1

First walleye of the day caught on a Rapala Taildancer 20-foot diver.  (Blue / Silver / Red)

DNR Launch Mouth of the Saginaw River

The launch has one dock open and guys are getting a few fish.  I'll be out on the water Friday and will report back. 

Chippewa lake

Jehnsen Lake

Looks nice. Several islands to fish around.

Big Evans Lake

Today we are out scouting for new lakes to fish this year. 

Last Ice Fishing Trip

Spring is here to stay so that means this is my last ice fishing trip for the year. With all of the warm weather my thoughts have been turned to getting my boat ready for the early walleye action. In the next few weeks I’m going to be down jig for monster walleyes on the Detroit River and then I’ll head to the mouth of the Saginaw River to troll for walleyes.

Pratt Lake

Pratt Lake Bluegill action in 16 FOW on the East Shore.   

Mark having fun catching bluegills on his first trip to Pratt Lake.

Houghton Lake

Slow start this morning. Fishing the north shore in by the river. If the action doesn't improve were heading down to Pratt Lake.

Open Water Tonight

With open water fishing right around the corner and the nice weather were having I was driven to stop by the Sanford Dam on my way home from work and try out some of my new crank baits. I spent about four hours casting for walleyes without any luck, but it was sure nice to get out and fish on the river. I also found that the 3-inch Rapala x-rap has awesome flicker action when worked against the current. We will be adding this lure to or walleye crank bait collection and trying this year.




Good Luck..

Pratt Lake

Fished Pratt from 5:00pm - 7:30pm and ended up with 14 sunfish and no walleyes.  I did hook a nice bass on a tip up and lost a pike.   I spotted two walleye on my camera both in 10 FOW, but couldn't make get them to hit my bait.