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walleyemaster

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Everything posted by walleyemaster

  1. Headed out of Sterling State Park (Monroe, MI) Sunday around 10:30 am. Overcast sky's and moderate west wind with steady white cap chop. Found a pack of boats in Breast Bay in 15 FOW, fished for 30 minutes - nothing. Started moving around towards 16-17 FOW straight out from Stony Point. Around 1 PM the sun came out, winds died way down and the bite took off. Got 80 from 1-4 PM (would've got our 2 man limit if I didn't have to leave for my kid's trick-or-treating). About 10 or so were 7.5"-8" about 50 were were 9" -10"; and 10+ were jumbo 10+" eaters. Even got a two 11" double hitter - haven't had two that size at once in God know's how many years). Overall an awesome day. One thing I noticed while cleaning them was the female egg sacks didn't look real mature yet, I don't think they are ready to spawn yet. I'm gonna keep the boat out until the weather gets close to 32 degrees.
  2. Launched out of Sterling St Park fished from fermi down to the twin towers. Lite bite all morning long with very calm weather almost no waves. Around 1PM west wind kicked up 2-3 ft waves. headed due east from Stony Point 24' FOW and found pockets of fish. Once the waves picked up the fishing took off. 2 man limit in 2 hrs on red bead/silver blade 1/2 circle spreaders with #6 hooks. BIG TIP: do your best to get emerald shiners, I got a mixed bag of sand shiners and emeralds. The emeralds were aggressively hit the minute they touched bottom, the sand shiners need the school to start feeding before they would go off. Whatever you do, DO NOT BUY the brown/purple bait, I don't know if they are chubs or what, but I heard they are minnows from the surrounding inland lakes (not from LSR or Erie) and the perch do not hit them. I got a few of them and tried them. They wouldn't get hit and I would eventually shake them off and put on an emerald.
  3. Stayed at LBM for the weekend (didn't know about the tournament). After talking with guys at the fish cleaning station, decided to target the front of the channel at 1 & 2. Fished with 3 oz BB's and 1 oz in-lines Sat morning and picked up 4 - all in morning with 3/4 hitting chartreuse blades/beads harnesses. Switched to 1 oz in-lines and hot-n-tots in the afternoon as it got really hot and sunny, but got nothing. When I got back at the fish cleaning station the guys that limited out said you had to fish in deep water (25' - 30') due to the heat, but you also had to get the hot-n-tots down to 18' - 20' or forget it. Sunday went out and dragged meat for an hour early morning (7-8am) but got no takers. Switched to crankbaits around 9am (wally divers and hot-n-tots) and used 3 oz in-lines. GOT ZIP THE REST OF THE MORNING. I tried different colored hot-n-tots, different weights, different god damn speeds, but nothing. It is a lot of work changing up set ups every 1/2 hour or so when using plastic. After lunch abandoned the cranks and threw on purple, blue and pink worm harnesses on the 3 and now 4 oz in-lines. Found a line of boats trolling (at 1.75 MPH) just SE of #1 and joined them in a pass along the channel. On the first pass with the wind/waves at my back, nailed a 4.5# (26') on purple #4 hammered blade with purple beads. Proceeded to hit 4 more in the next hour before the Bay got real nasty and blew everyone off it. All fish came on purple in the bright sun. Pretty tough weekend, wish I could figure out how to get crankbaits down to 20'. I tried a mini-diver, but it would not work with a fast action hot-n-tot, it would only dive with a spoon and I didn't have any really good walleye spoons. Oh, my son got tangled up with something big Sunday afternoon and I had to shutdown the trolling motor to allow him to fight the fish without breaking it off (10# test). After about 10 minutes he brought up the biggest channel cat I've ever seen - 9#'er. Thought we had the monster 'eye, pike or muskie on, talk about disappointment - all that time for garbage fish. At least it gave him practice about how to land big fish on light tackle. I think the Bay is now pretty scattered from this point forward and the excellent fishing we had in June fishing is gone for this year...any thoughts?
  4. I was probably about 1 mile east and just north of sparkplug trolling with the current (west-east in morning) in 18 - 19 FOW. I heard Priority 1 on #68 throughout the day fishing in +35 FOW, but couldn't figure out where you got those +15 fish...
  5. please help me understand why you use the divers and planar boards. Can't you just use different ounces of in-lines to achieve the same depth effect as using the dipsy's?
  6. Went out at 7 am with my son and set up 2 1oz in-lines (40' back) and 2 3oz BB (60' back), Plus 1 rod off the stern with 4oz BB (80' back). Trolled at 1.5 - 1.7 MPH (ground speed). Limited by noon, with 9/10 fish in the excellent eating size (17"-20"). Only threw back 5 or 6 dinks and didn't shepherd as much as usual (except my son nailing a 8 lb'r!). 6 fish came off the rod in the back of the boat using 4oz BB, blue beads and hammered chrome #4 blade harness. Only 2 fish came off the in-lines. Other fish hit purple beads/hammered purple blade and light pink beads/hammered pink blade. Heard about white and tigereye blades hitting pretty good on VHF #68 but only got 1 eye on that color. All in all - a Father couldn't ask for a better Fathers Day...
  7. Anybody know where to try for some perch this weekend?
  8. I'm coming in Saturday night around 8PM to fish the evening and all day Sunday. Launching out of Saginaw River DNR launch site (Bay City). Where should I fish that evening? I want to get my limit before midnight so I can get off the water and clean/ice them down before heading back out Sunday morning for another limit. Do BB and harnesses work well at night? If so is purple and pink still good colors at night or should I go with glow-in-the dark or chartruese harnesses? Should I fish shallow (< 10') or deeper water? Or should I put on crankbaits and troll in the shallows? Callahan reef is nice and shallow, plus close to Sag Riv launch site. Would that be a good starting point? Or should I just head out to sparkplug and give it a go around there?
  9. I wanted to pass along another new thing from my trip last weekend. An old-timer from Detroit told me to bleed the walleye after catching them while still alive so that all the blood gets pumped out by the fish while they are still alive. He said they are so much nicer to clean because you don't have all the blood coming out. Also, the flesh remains absolutely pearl white and improves the taste since blood stained flesh tends to add the fishy taste to all fish. And I have to say after cleaning 30+ walleyes this weekend and eating a few fresh caught Monday night, I completely agree with him. I had absolutely no blood during fish cleaning and I had never seen such white filets before in my life. The taste of fresh ones bled and eaten the same day was the best! Here's the method. You keep a 5 gallon pail on the boat and fill with about 1/3 fill of water when you are ready to bleed them. After catching the fish you start at the top of the gills and cut along the cheek until you get right at the bottom. But watch out! depending how fast you do this after they are caught, blood sprays out and can catch on your clothes. I preferred to bleed mine a little bit after catching them so I could first re-set my lines and get the troll back on. I would just put them on ice for a few minutes and then when the mayhem stopped and we were back to trolling waiting for bites, I would then go in the cooler, cut them, then toss them in the bucket to allow them to pump water through their gills and excrete all the blood. After a couple minutes I put them back in the cooler and threw the bloody water back overboard. I will always do this from now on, the result are so worth the small effort during fishing.
  10. we used in-line 1 oz and 1.5 oz 30 ft feet back at around 1.3 - 1.5 MPH (measuring ground speed on my GPS). I estimate the meat was down around 10 ft in 19 FOW.
  11. I just found this forum right before leaving for Bay City and my first multi-day trip targeting walleye in the Bay. As an accomplished walleye guy from D-town, I brought all my harnesses colors and techniques learned over years of jigging the detroit river and trolling western basin of lake Erie. However, after reading all the posts last week, I had the idea that all my traditional colors (chartruse/chartruse, orange/gold, red/silver,etc) might not be the right combo's. Seemed everyone was catching on purple and pink harnesses. We got out on the water late Friday night to horrible 3-4 rolling whitecaps, set up some traditional color harnesses and got nothing. Came back in pretty quick and with some time to kill before dark headed up to Linwood to check our the campground and Franks tackle shop. At Franks I noticed the 'new hot colors;' they were promoting just at Franks and bought purple, pink and blue translucent beads that seemed to glimmer in the sunlight way different than the traditional solid colors I used. I also bought some shiny purple and pink blades as well as firetiger blades. I made up a dozen or so harnesses: purple/purple, pink/pink, and blue/silver, firetiger/white floaters+glow-in-the dark beads. All blades were #4 colorado hammered blade style. Headed out to the fireplug and started trolling, sometimes heading over to a pack of boats or just on our own. We found a channel of fish just southeast of fireplug and marked spots when we got bites. Soon I had a linear line of fish and I just trolled though that area time and time again all weekend. Ended up limiting out Sat and Sun but not Monday, due to the two storms that came through - although we got 4 fish Monday from 7:30-9:00 am so I know we would've gotten our 3 man limit that day as well! Overall I found the majority of the fish were caught when trolling with the current over waypoints I marked when we caught fish. ALL THE FISH came on my new harnesses - NO fish on ones I brought with me. Purple/purple and pink/pink hit the best, but blue and hammered silver blades would have done the same had I used it more. The first day firetiger hit well, but only got one on the same setup the next day. In conclusion (sorry for the long report!), I wanted to thank all of you posters for your excellent information and wanted to give back by letting you all know exactly what I did to catch more walleye over a 3 day period than I ever have in my life. I am definitely coming back this year and plan to book a 'fish camp' trip for me and my buddies every year from now on!
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