5/26/16, Saginaw Bay, Au Gres, Fishing Report

[Trophy Specialist]

 

 

We had a nice day on the water with my clients from S. Michigan and West Virginia taking their limits of dandy walleyes by noon. I had a day off yesterday, but instead of working around the house like I probably should have done, my wife, a friend and I went out fishing to scout out a bunch of spots on the Bay other than where I had been fishing previously, which seemed to be petering out. When I scout, I don't stay in one spot too long regardless of how many fish we catch there. We just keep spot checking to hopefully compile a good A, B, C.... plan for my next charter. We only found one good spot yesterday though in all the spots we checked and that is where we went first thing in the morning today. They had been predicting a chance of rain today, but we did not get any in Au Gres and we had pretty good fishing conditions all morning with light winds and mostly overcast skies until late morning when the sun finally broke out on and off. We had fairly steady action all morning except for one lull when the sun first popped out and the wind died down to nothing for a short stint. Today the fish were picky with orange/chartreuse harnesses being preferred. All the fish we marked and caught were tight to the bottom, so that is where we put the crawlers, behind bottom bouncers. The trolling speed needed to be under 1.6 with 1.2 bring best trolling into the wind and 1.5 doing the job best with the wind. There was a current in that area, thus the difference in trolling speed preference. There were also lots of floating weeds and debris floating in the area which required constant lure maintenance to keep them running unfouled. Most of the walleyes today were 18 to 22 inches, with only three below that range. We also caught two bass too, with one being a master angler qualifier by 1/2 inch. The bite was light today, but the number of fish lost was minimal. Most of the fish would just latch on to the lures without much pulling. I had some good fishermen on the rods today though, so that helped them limit out for sure as they made no fish fighting mistakes all morning long. We caught all our fish off the Church Walleye Boards today with not one walleye hit being recorded on the two flat lines, which tells me they were spooking from the boat today. We were fishing in 15 to 20 feet of water, so the fairly calm conditions in that somewhat clear water probably caused their spookiness and bottom hugging.

 

 

Capt. Mike Veine