Houghton Lake Walleye Report "Fishing in the Rain" Friday May 21st

Walleyes in the Rain

I got the chance to fish Houghton Lake on Friday the 21st and Saturday the 22nd of May with my Brother Dennis.  We haven't been fishing together very much lately due to my work and activities downstate, but we planned for a couple weeks to fish on the 21st.  Knowing Michigan and how quickly the weather changes, we agreed that we would fish unless the conditions looked unsafe.

When Friday finally arrived, the weather was very still and the clouds were showing rain was not far off, however after checking with NOAA it appeared we would only have showers.  We NEVER fish during any electrical storms.... That is a no brainer.

We left the south boat launch at 8:15 PM to take a shot at the "Nite Bite".  Dennis has been doing very well this year on many spots but he had one in particular in mind for the night to get his brother into some fish.

We had flat water and the Tracker Tundra pulled into the spot in less than 5 minutes.

We dropped the trolling motor and began putting the rods out at about 8:30 pm.  We had a fish on immediately as we didn't even get all the rods set ( Running 6 lines - No Boards or Birds ) and it was a nice 16 inch walleye.  That was a pretty good indication of how the night would proceed.

We got that fish in the live well and two more rods went off... we caught 8 more small fish all about 14 to 14 1/2  inches.

We continued to work the area and began to produce some bigger fish.

We were done fishing and had the boat on the trailer by 10:30 PM.

THE FINAL COUNT was 42 Walleyes in the Net of which we kept a limit of 15 fish and the average fish was 17 inches.  We didn't get any big Hogs, but the ones we got tasted GREAT!  We had a HHS Team Fish Fry Saturday Afternoon at the Ranch.   

Best of Luck!
Douglas Resseguie
www.hothuntingspots.com

Houghton Lake Walleye Report 5/18/10

We had an opportunity to get out fishing on Houghton Lake last night (5/18). The fishing was a bit slow on the north shore, but we managed to catch one keeper and 7 undersized walleye. After spending 2-hours on the north shore we headed over to the South shore and trolled along the shore by the Heights Marina until 9:30pm. The action was also slow but we had a good bite right at dark and picked up two keepers and five undersized fish. Water temperatures are still all over the place making fishing difficult on HL. I found 57 degree water on the North shore and 63.5 degree water on the South West shore last night, hopefully the weather conditions will stabilize soon.

I added two pictures the view of the Crawford County fire from Houghton Lake.

Good Luck......

Houghton Lake Walleye Report 5/12 - 5/15

There are benefits to being late for work like bumping into your all time favorite walleye fishermen at the gas station. This morning I had the pleasure shaking hands with Gary Parsons and checking out his boat while pumping gas. I must say wow, it was awesome to finally meet the guy I have read about and studied from for years, it made my day. Ok, now on to the Houghton Lake Walleye report for the last week.

Last Tuesday the fishing action took a turn for the worst when the water temperature dropped 10 degrees overnight on shallow Houghton Lake. I made it out fishing on Wednesday and caught six walleyes on the South Shore and really didn’t notice a major change in bite.

Friday we stared out of the South lunch at 7:50am and didn’t catch a keeper walleye until 9:40am. The morning action was super slow the wind was terrible and after changing up a few times we hit a spot in 6 FOW just west of the Limberlost that ended up producing eight walleyes by the end of the day. Saturday we headed out at 9:00am and did some exploring around the lake. We setup on the North shore in 7 FOW and picked up three walleye the best on being 18.5 inches. After marking a few areas we headed to the East Bay where we trolled the East shore and ended up catching seven walleye two of which were keepers. Fishing friends Jeff and Tom were out on HL Saturday and reported 3 keepers after fishing all day.

Overall the weather and the extreme 10 degree drop in water temperature made catching Houghton Lake walleye a bit difficult last week. I’ll be out fishing on Wednesday and will report back.

Good Luck….

Houghton Lake Walleye Report 5-7-10

We got out and fished Friday morning and caught six walleye between 8:00am – 9:45am. The trip started out 150 yards from the South launch in 7 FOW. We trolled with the wind and ended up with 2 fish by 8:30am. Keeping on our scouting plan we moved over to the North shore and fished in 7 FOW and picked up 3 fish trolling with the wind. To avoid the east wind we moved in closer to shore and caught two more fish in 5 FOW on the sand and then at 9:45am it was like someone hit a kill switch and turned off the fish. The weather ended up getting the best of us and my digital camera, so we ended up calling it a day at 1:00pm.




I’ll post the fish pictures when I recover my SD chip.



Good Luck….

Houghton Lake Walleye Report 5-5-10

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……

Houghton Lake Walleye Report 5-1-10

A busy weekend and bad weather conditions kept us on shore most of the weekend. I did manage to get out and fish on Saturday afternoon. We headed over to the North Shore at 12:00pm and attempted to troll, but got shutdown by wind. We then moved over to the South shore and fished just east of the Limberlost. The wind made it hard to troll the shoreline, so we setup our troll with the wind working shallow to deep (5ft to 11ft).

The bite was slow at best and our normal trolling setup wasn’t getting down to the fish. I changed over to TD 7 taildancers back 65 ft and Storm Thundersticks back 30 ft and trolled them at 2.25mph when we hit 8 FOW. We worked this method for about 2 hours and finally gave up to the wind at 4:30pm. Overall we caught five keeper walleye, lost one, and threw back two undersized fish.

Good Luck…..

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).