6/13/2014, Saginaw Bay, Au Gres, Fishing Report

[Trophy Specialist]

I had four great guys from the Clio, Michigan area fishing with me today and it was a good thing they booked an eight-hour charter instead of a five-hour trip because we needed the extra time for them to limit out with today's tough bite. The weatherman had predicted sunny skies and winds from the northwest at 15 to 18 knots. What we got was mostly cloudy conditions with west winds howling at 20 to 25 knots and air temperatures that didn't even reach 60 degrees for a high. It was a good thing that we were fishing at Au Gres where deep water is close to shore and it was also a good thing that there are good numbers of walleyes close to shore there too. We ran out less than one mile, set lines and trolled out until we were about three miles from shore, then we had to pull lines, run back closer to shore and repeat that trolling pass four times today to max out on fish. We caught eight walleyes on the first pass, but after that, the wind increased and the clouds moved in and the bite slowed considerably. We then slowly picked away at them though until limits were caught. We caught about a half dozen nice sized walleyes, but the rest were smaller eating sized fish. We also caught at least a dozen undersized walleyes today too, most of which were just barely under 15 inches. We trolled at 1.4 to 1.7 mph today and had to use drift socks on and off to slow the boat enough to hit those productive speeds as the gusting winds were really pushing us along at times. We caught all our fish on spinner/crawler rigs with fire/tiger and silver/red being best. All the fish we caught and marked on sonar were tight to the bottom, so we used bottom bouncers to target those low-down fish. This was the toughest day of fishing I've experienced since my first charter this year, but even on a tough weather day Saginaw Bay's world class walleye population still produced limits. In fact, we have caught limits on every charter so far this year. It doesn't get much better than that.

Capt. Mike Veine