7/1/17, Saginaw Bay, Au Gres, Fishing Report

[Trophy Specialist]

7/1/17, Saginaw Bay, Au Gres, Fishing Report

 

We ushered in July today with a banner day of walleye fishing on the Bay with my clients from Greenville, MI catching their limits of 32 nice walleyes in short order.  We fished a totally new area today some ten miles from the zone we had been fishing for the past week.  I suspected that based on the winds we had experienced the past week and the resulting water temperature shifts in the Bay, that this new spot would be full of walleyes and sure enough it certainly was chuck full of fish.  From the time I set lines until we pulled lines we had non-stop action with doubles, triples, quadruples and even one time when we had five on at one time.  Also, we only made one trolling pass and never had to turn around once as we never got out of that massive school of walleyes, which likely stretched for five or more miles.  The walleyes we caught today were of all sizes too with a lot of fish under 20" for some ultra tasty eating and also a bunch of fish over 20" that put up some scrappy battles that even earned some of them their freedom (lost fish).  We pulled the same spinner/crawler rigs that have occupied my rods since early May.  Some are natural colored and some are bright fluorescents and all of them worked equally with no preference shown.  We had a south wind to start out the morning, but it shifted to the west a while into the trip, but the fish continued to keep hammering those spinners.  Our trolling speed was 1.4 to 1.7 mph in the surging waves.  We only caught 4 or 5 undersized walleyes today, but we also caught three catfish, one of which was a 10 pound giant channel cat.  We also caught a few sheephead and one nice yellow perch too.  On the way back in we came across of big flock of cormorants actively feeding and when we got closer they tried to take off, but some were so full of fish that they could not fly.  Some even barfed up their stomach contents and one of the fish they left floating was an 18" walleye; another was a similar sized sucker.  I was surprised that they could swallow such a big walleye, but obviously they can I'm sure that they do so regularly consuming a lot of our valuable walleye and perch resources.  I hate those non-indigenous cormorants and at the very least their populations should be controlled and the DNR and Fish and Willife Service agree, but one federal judge that has likely never even seen a cormorant stopped all control measures in the Great Lakes region and that is a giant travesty of justice since she went against the recommendations of the biologist that manage our natural resources.  

Capt. Mike Veine

[Nailer]

Thank you for the update

 

[Trophy Specialist]

Off the charts fishing again today with limits of mostly bigger fish in short order.  Au Gres walleye fishing is on fire right now. 

[I_Catch_Her]

I share your opinion of both the Cormorants and the Judge.

Thanks again for the update!