A big boy today!

Doin this from my phone so not sure how it will work but went out today and stuck a pig. 53.5 inches and bottomed out the 30lb boga grip. Tail was still on the deck of the boat and bottomed it out. Just picked up a big boy bucktail last week. Had it in the water for about 30 mins when it hit. Just north of the hump about mid lake. 2 oz back 85 feet was the ticket. Got pic on my phone but will have to post later. Fish only came out of the water for quick weight and pic. Revived her for about 10 mins and she went right down. Floating weeds were bad.

walleye

fished OH waters friday at saturday. took 3 man OH limits both days. Friday we were done in just a few hours and saturday the fish moved on us from the previous day and we had to work a lot harder. Picked away at them for most of the day and then found a good school of fish and were able to stay on them until we finished the limit. On fri we had 6 undersized fish and not much trash fish. On sat we only had 3 throwbacks but a TON of junk fish. There was a huge pack of boats NW of west sister that extended all the way to north of the island. We stayed south and farther west of the pack.

spoons and mini discs were the setup with 2 rods setup with size 0 dipseys on 3 settings. Depending on the time of day and weather conditions it seemed we had to keep switching colors and depths to stay on them. On friday we caught everything high in the water column over 27-28 feet of water and on saturday we found them early up high but eventually dropped everything down to about 20 ft of water over similar depths. 2.1 to 2.6 mph on the gps.

caught a few fish on bigger sized spoons but most action came from the scorpion sized stingers and jr. streaks. the fish are not jumping in the boat like they have in years past but they are out there and seem to be moving farther east each week. The trick for us again was working waypoints. Once we caught a couple of fish we would turn and work back through those points. When we went for a long a period with a touch we would go back through the waypoints and sure enough would hit fish. I think the schools are smaller and more concentrated right now. Had fish anywhere from just legal up to 23 inches, all good eater fish. I think the fishflys are winding down but when we were cleaning fish they all had bellys full of fish flies.

TIP OF THE DAY: Next time you are fishing during the fly hatch try spoons with dots on them. For some reason for the past few years I have been playing around with this and from what I see the spoons with dot patterns out produce any of the others. tight lines!

Sunday Saginaw Bay

Well went to the bay and caught a few fish. Got a later start then would have liked to. Started out OK, got out of the house on planned time, made good time on the drive up and then we hit the Patterson Rd. boat launch.... What a zoo! Had to wait about 45 mins to launch, nobody working the launches which made it pretty much a free for all as people raced for launch slips. Parking lot was full but they were still bringing people in and having them park whever they could. So, finally launch the boat and start heading down the river when my buddy goes to fire up his GPS.... no power.... Oh yeah, if you remember sunday morning out on the water, there was just a little bit of fog. Not a good morning to be without.... So we got on the shipping channel and motored slowly down the shipping channel trying to follow the bouys out to the Spark Plug. After a long ride we found the plug and then had identified the GPS problem as a dead battery. Hooked everything up to the one working battery and we were back in the game. Needless to say it was a lot later than we had expected to be starting fishing since we had to come off the water by 2 pm.

Moved out away from the other boats and dropped lines in about 25 ft of water and immediately had 3 fish on. Unfortunately they were all about a quarter of an inch too short. We ran mostly Deep Little Rippers but took a couple of fish on crawler harness with gulp. We tried to target the 12 foot range over 25 feet of water. Fishing slowed so we trolled towards the mouth, but only hit a couple of more fish. Picked up and ran in closer to 17 feet of water for the last hour and picked up a few more. Nothing steady just hitting a couple of fish here and there. Speed was around 1.6 to 1.9 on the GPS. Ended the day with 6 fish and 4 throwbacks. Never really got on an active school of fish.... Size was a bit on the smaller size but had one nice fish around 4lbs. No real pattern for us, harness took a couple, Little rippers in various colors all produced fish too. Ran some Tots but never touched a fish.

Bugs were horrible!!!! Not the biting ones but the little gnatty ones that you end up smearing all over everything. I think the numbers this year will be on the bay but i think the quality will be better on erie based on what I have seen on both bodies of water this year so far. Lots of boats with similar reports but did talk to a guy at the launch that said he caught and released 29 fish total from first light until about 1 pm! he wasn't talking about where or on what, but i assume he was pulling meat from what I saw on rods in his boat. Good luck if you go, plenty of fish out there!

Another sad ending....

Just thought I would throw this up as a reminder and because there are a few kayakers here on the board. Be careful guys, the water is still awfully cold. I personally don't kayak but even with a life jacket on, if it goes over you may only have a few minutes to try and get back on before the cold hits ya.

http://www.wnem.com/news/23278316/detail.html

Erie walleye

Well it looks like the bass reports have taken over the board and there have been tons of the river walleye reports so i thought I would throw out an erie report.

Got back sunday from 3 days of fishing the reef complex in OH waters. Thursday and friday we manged to get out east of west sister and north of the cans to do some trolling. Both days we started the day trolling and then ended the day finishing limits on the jig bite. Trolling was a bit slower than the jig bite but quality was much better. Biggest fish was around 9 pounds trolling. If the sun was high, fishing was better a bit deeper as the clouds rolled in we were hitting fish up high, 8-9 feet down over 31 feet of water. Reef runners took a few fish but most were caught on deep diving husky jerks. We tried pulling some harnesses but didn't have much luck. One of the other boats in our group pulled all harnesses the first day and took one fish until they switched over to husky jerks. Once they made the swith they started hitting fish.

By friday afternoon the wind was staring to pick up. On saturday all we could do was get out to about 12 feet of water for the jig bite. Made one long drift and had our 16 fish in the boat in just over 2 hours. On thurs and fri after trolling we usually needed a few fish to finish the limit and we usually got those in one short drift and about a half hour of jigging. Black, purple and blue hair jigs seemed to work the best. We experimented around a bit and caught fish with jigs tipped with minnows, plastics and even a piece of crawler. The jig bite was not so much about what you were using but rather your jigging style. Fish seemed to want an agreesive jigging motion but you had to keep in constant contact with the jig, took numerous fish on a tight line on the drop.

Overall it was a great trip and I am now looking forward to the spoon bite starting! Good luck if you get out. Here are a couple of avg fish that we got trolling.

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