[deadstick]

Well, had the week of the 4th off and spent the 3rd thru the 8th in the Traverse City area. Saturday 3rd we drove up early and were fishing on Big Platte lake by 9am and in 3.5 hrs we caught several nice smallmouth, the biggest was 2.5#'s. That afternoon, Sunday and Monday morning were spent at Grandma's cleaning up the yard and stuff. Monday afternoon we drive forever looking for a campsite and finally are forced to reside in a forest campground full of screaming kids and a bunch of drunks... Nothing like getting away to the north woods! Well, we were there to fish anyways so we headed out for a couple hrs on Skegmog and again a few nice fish, the biggest around 3#'s. Head back to camp for a late dinner and a foray of fireworks, that are not allowed in the campgrounds, provided by the nieghbors until about 2am. Tuesday, the alarm goes off 6am and there's the dreaded pounding of rain on the tent and an unexpected chill in the air that convinces us to fall back asleep for a few more hours. Late morning we are launching on the East GT bay at Elk Rapids; 50 degrees, south east wind and spiting rain - water temp 60deg. We headed north and drift over several great looking areas in various depths and zero bites except for a couple gobies and zebra mussels. Heavier rain moves in and we decide to call it a day - skunked. Wednesday, we head out of a public launch on the west side of east bay and head towards Traverse City to the sand flats. Again weather is dark, gloomy, drizzle and cold. I start fishing shallow and casting to any dark spot I can see on the bottom and finally hook a smally, then nothing so we moved deeper and find that locating the small weed / gravel clumps is difficult due to the wind blown chop and heavy overcast skies. All of the half dozen or so spots we found held fish, the biggest being 3.5#'s. After several hours scouring the area we head to camp for dinner and a hot cup of coffee. Thursday, we wake up to the same weather; dark clouds, drizzle, and cold temps. We decide to pack up camp and head over to Mullet lake and fish for a couple hours before heading home. At Mullet lake, we fished about 2.5 hours on several "Fishing Hot Spots" locations(My wife has become very "helpful" in determining where we will fish now that I showed her these maps.) After this time we are both getting tired of the crappy weather and the resultant slow fishing but I decide to try one more area before heading home. My wife is showing great displeasure in us stopping in this location because there isn't a number or shaded area anywhere near it on the map. Just then I catch the first - a 2.5#er. This is enough to get the wife fishing again and after drifting another 100yrds or so she hooks up with a big smally that she can not budge. She takes a couple feet and it takes a couple feet. After what has to be the longest battle with a bass that I have ever seen, I net the smally that turns out to be 4.7#. Her biggest so far and the biggest of the trip. We decide to end the trip on that note and start the drive home. That's it! I have a feeling, if the weather had cooperated we would have caught tons of fish but even with the poor conditions we were happy with results considering neither of us had fished any of the lakes before. Well, how did everyone else do??

 

[jcheetam]

Well Deadstick, we went out two days, Saturday and Monday. We launched off the DNR launch about 3 or 4 miles up the penninsula and ran North, stopping at a few areas along the way and only saw a few fish, but they were all BIG. We fished anywhere from 6 to 30 feet deep and only had one or two bites, but no fish in the boat. Decided to try again on Monday morning and ran south this time to around 3 mile rd. We found fish on dark spots (emergent weeds?) and ended up boating a few. The biggest was about 3 pounds or so, but came unbuttoned at the boat. It was a pretty tough bite the two days we were on the bay, but it was still fun nonetheless...I'd definitely like to fish it again if the weather was right.