Weed Whacker Walleye. 3-20-09

[Walleye Express]

Wulp, what a difference a day and 20 MPH NNW wind can make on Saginaw Bay. We started out this morning by launching a lot closer to our fishing destination. A friend of ours owns a private launch on the Kawkawlin River and saved us buco time and travel distance to our spot. So we headed out into what was about a 1 foot Chop as we cleared the mouth of the old kawkaw. Residual waves left from yesterday blow. That's when I noticed an old friend setting in the mud at the mouth. It was our old ice burg buddy from Wednesday that had blown ashore and almost blocked the rivers mouth. Fortunately, I had marked both ice burgs we fished by and the places where they were on my GPS on Wednesday, so we could hopefully continue where we left off.

Well then, we also instantly noticed the water temp was down 2 degrees and the clarity was more stained, with large amounts of floating debris everywhere on the surface. Reeds, cattails and some coontail type weeds that were all either dislodged by the recent winds or old stuff being pushed back towards shore from the Saginaw Rivers recent flush. Then top all that off with the bite that the 35 degrees air temp had on your face and hands, compared to the 56 degrees from Wednesday, and I wasn't the happiest chipmunk on the wood pile. I told Reel Fishing (Mark) it may be a real short day.

But like all die hard fishermen we pressed on to our beginning spot. And sure enough every 10 minutes all the boards had to be brought in and cleaned off. The lures for the most part stayed cleaner then did the boards, that gathered junk like the city DPW. That's when we noticed that the debris line was not as bad towards shore. The undertow of returning waves as they reflect off shore Kinda keeps an area clear of this type of floating debris. So we decided to shorten the leads on the boards and fish closer to shore. What the heck the water was stained more then the other day, so maybe the fish were holding in closer. Wulp, the debris still gave us some trouble, but we found some fish.

Edited March 22, 2009 by Walleye Express

[Adam Bomb]

Nice job Dan....Seems that Firetiger is showing up with regularity again this year...Suprise suprise....Great perenial producer!

[Priority1]

Dan, GJ figuring it out. This time of year things change fast. Think like a fish and gitter done.

[Walleye Express]

This is as early as I ever tried trolling on the Bay and we're having a ball. Kinda neat solving these fishing puzzles both by luck and experience. And yupper, the firetiger colors have been the best so far. That YO-Zuri and Rattlin Rouge (both in tiger) have also been doing a good job. All the fish today were females again. As far as I can tell from their egg maturity, and how cold the water still is, these fish could be staging for another week or more before heading up-river. Their calling for snow flurries tomarrow morning. Probably won't hit er again till Monday or Tuesday.

[Adam Bomb]

Heading out in my buddies new boat tomorrow. Hope to break it in right. Any particular lead or speed been good Dan? We were running our Shad raps at like 25' back at 0.8-1.0 the day i was out. Had em just ticking bottom. I hope his boat will troll down well with the cold water temps.

[Walleye Express]

I would not worry to much about trolling down. Last Wedsnesday when we caught those 8 walleyes, I broke the speed wheel off my fish finder when coming out of the Finn road launch on some floating ice. So I judged how fast we were trolling all morning by my motors tachometor. So after about our 4th fish I decided to change modes on my GPS from plotter to regular and see just how slow or fast we were really trolling. Only then did we find out that were were trolling at 1.8 to 2.1MPH all morning. That was way faster then my usual early spring/night time trolling speed of .08 to 1MPH. I forgot all about my habbit of trolling in neutral with my Jet Drive motor and simply adjusting my idle speed to go faster or slower, which I usually do when trolling at night. So with my Jets water transfer coupler engaged all morning, we were trolling faster then I thought we were on Wednesday, so we never changed a thing for yesterday trip. You know the old saying. If it's not broke.:grin:

The leads yesterday started at 30/40 but were reduced to 15/20 when we fished shallow. All of our fish yesterday came in 6 FOW or a little less.