8/18/2014, Saginaw Bay, Au Gres, Fishing Report

[Trophy Specialist]

I meet my customers every morning at H&H Bakery and Restaurant and tell them to follow me down to the launch and just park their vehicle where all the other trucks and trailer rigs are parked. This morning though, when I we got down to the DNR launch, the place was completely empty which was surprising considering it was a very nice day indeed. Needless to say, the fishing pressure at this time of the year is a lot lower than it is earlier in the season when the ramp is typically packed. The fishing is still excellent though as my customers from the Benton Harbor, MI area caught an impressive limit of walleyes today and also enjoyed a beautiful, sunny day on the Bay too. The fishing started off pretty slow though as we only caught four fish in the first four four hours of fishing. At mid-day though the walleyes turned on and it was non-stop action from 11:30 until limits were reached by about 1:00. We had trolled over that hot area earlier in the morning too, but the fish there then were not active, but we just kept after them until they went on the feed. We caught a lot of nice sized fish today too with most of the walleyes running 18 to 24 inches with only two under 17". We did the damage with red/silver spinner/crawler rigs trolled about 10' below the surface targeting suspended fish. A trolling speed of 1.7 to 1.8 mph was best. The floating weeds were not nearly as bad today as they were yesterday, so that was nice. I even got some fish today for my dinner too, which I will eat with a morel mushroom sauce and some fresh green beans with banana peppers that I picked from my garden yesterday evening. A meal doesn't get much better than that.

Capt. Mike Veine