Budd Lake December 9th

The weather has been very cold here in central Michigan and the lakes are freezing fast.

Normally I'd still be bow hunting for a monster buck at this time of the year, but the deer hunting in our area is down right terrible. I have spent the last two weekends scouting deer and I can't find a track. I also have four trail cameras out in the woods and the only pictures I've got are of three bears.

With that side and out of the way it's time to talk about fishing on the ice. We made it out to Budd Lake on 12-9-07 and found 6 1/2 -inches of ice and no fishermen on the lake. I started out searching in 24 FOW on the rock piles and after drilling about twenty holes I didn't find a fish. We moved into 12 FOW and worked along the sandy breaks and found two big schools of perch. I drilled about thirty holes in a sixty yard area and we went to work catching perch.

We were using 2-lb test a small hook, minnow, and one split shot. On Budd Lake we have good succes fishing with natural bait presentations. The perch fishing was on fire from 1:00pm to 3:00pm and we landed over one hundred fish. The best fish was 13.5 -inches and the average was around 9 - inches.

Make sure you check ice conditions before you walk out on the lake.

Budd Lake December 9th

The weather has been very cold here in central Michigan and the lakes are freezing fast.

Normally I'd still be bow hunting for a monster buck at this time of the year, but the deer hunting in our area is down right terrible. I have spent the last two weekends scouting deer and I can't find a track. I also have four trail cameras out in the woods and the only pictures I've got are of three bears.

With that side and out of the way it's time to talk about fishing on the ice. We made it out to Budd Lake on 12-9-07 and found 6 1/2 -inches of ice and no fishermen on the lake. I started out searching in 24 FOW on the rock piles and after drilling about twenty holes I didn't find a fish. We moved into 12 FOW and worked along the sandy breaks and found two big schools of perch. I drilled about thirty holes in a sixty yard area and we went to work catching perch.

We were using 2-lb test a small hook, minnow, and one split shot. On Budd Lake we have good succes fishing with natural bait presentations. The perch fishing was on fire from 1:00pm to 3:00pm and we landed over one hundred fish. The best fish was 13.5 -inches and the average was around 9 - inches.

Make sure you check ice conditions before you walk out on the lake.

Extreme Ice Fishing

Hot Hunting Spots Ice Crew

September Walleye Trip

We didn't get a chance to fish Houghton Lake in August because we were out in Colorado bow hunting for elk and mule deer for 3-weeks so I don't have an August report. But after getting all of the hunting stuff done we made it up to Houghton Lake on (9-28) to try out a few of our fall fishing spots.

Our trip started out at 4:30pm with a very strong wind out of the NW. We headed over to the north shore and started trolling the edge of the sand bar in 7 FOW. After an hour of landing weeds and pike we picked up and headed back south to fish a spot that is normally hot in early May.

We setup with small blue / gold bomber, clown colored small bombers, and small blue tail dancers 55 and 68 foot back on 8 lb test in 5.5 FOW at a 1.9mph troll. As we made our second pass at 5:20pm we hit directly on the sand break and picked up two walleyes. We marked the spot and stated working it until we had our tenth fish at 7:45pm. The best walleye we caught was 23-inches.

When we were pulling our boat out we met up with two other fishermen who put had in two days on Houghton Lake in 7 - 10 FOW. They were drift fishing and reported that they had only caught three walleyes and a ton of pike. My suggestion for anyone fishing Houghton is to find sandy breaks and troll.

I'm not sure when I'll be back to fish Houghton because we have Michigan bow hunting and one more trip out west on (10-15).

Good Luck!

Bay Walleye Fishing Still On Fire

We fished out of Au Gre on Monday morning (7-2) and had another great fishing day out on the Saginaw Bay. This was possibly the best fishing trip we have had out on the bay in regard to the number of walleyes we landed. We fished for 6-hours and landed 52 walleyes! The fishing action was out of control making it nearly impossible to run all six fishing rods. The fish we were catching were ranged from 15 to 22 inches with a few being 24".

We fished with crawler harnesses (purple & silver), (blue & silver), and 2oz bottom bouncers back 110 feet in 30 to 35 FOW. The majority of the fish we were marking were 4' off the bottom and when we found one we found a school. GOOD LUCK.....

We have only been out on the Saginaw Bay three times since April. The good news is that all of our trips have ended with limits. I have to say that the Bay fishing is very good this year and if you work at it you can find some nice sized walleyes.

June 16th we fished from the Spark Plug east out to number 1. We fished from 6:30am - 1:00pm and put twenty walleyes in the boat. The fish were all from 15 - 21 inches. We were running crawler harnesses 4 to 6 feet off of the bottom with Berkly Gulp night crawlers at 1.5mph. The most active colors were fire tiger and blue with silver strips.

June 22nd we fished one mile north of the spark plug in 22 FOW and again had very good success. We used crawler harnesses and 2oz bottom bouncers back 100'. The fish were average size 15 -20".


June 24th we fished out of Au Gre and ended up limiting out in 5-hours. We fished from 12:30pm - 5:30pm out about 6.5 miles in 40FOW. We marked several good schools of fish and were able to capitalize on some larger fish. We ended up landing 21 fish, lost 5 and put 15 in the box. The best fish of the day was 29" followed by four fish that were 26 to 27 inches.

We fished with 1.5oz bottom bouncers and crawler harnesses off of in line boards at 1.6 mph. During our fishing we also caught fish on crawler harnesses lead by a floating rapala. When fish are feeding on meat and I find them suspended I like to rig up a floating crank bait minus the hooks in front of a 5' long crawler harness and a snap weight. This gives me the ability to put the bait at the required depth when fish are suspended. One last change I make is to change the back hook on all of my crawler harnesses to a treble hook. It doesn't effect how the bait runs and helps keep more fish on.


Good luck......

Still Catching Walleyes

I've been fishing three times since my last fishing report. I fished June 1st and landed 4 walleyes all of them were in 6FOW of the lighthouse point or as the bass fishing guys call it the bass bedding ground. We trolled the area at 1.9mph using small bomber (Red / White).

Fished again on June 10th in the same area and picked up five walleyes with one being 22" and two nice small mouth bass. Small tail dancers were the ticket.

June 13th was my last trip out and we ended up getting four walleyes all 15 - 19 inches. I'm thinking that the fishing in 5 to 6 FOW is about done. The water temp was 82-degree's F at 2 foot below the surface. On this trip we didn't catch any pike or bass which was odd.

My next fishing trip is tomorrow morning on the Saginaw Bay. We are fishing in a local tournament sponsored by the Eagles 1010. Everyone I have talked to down here in Bay City are telling me that they are slamming walleye in 16 to 20 FOW using meat at 1.6mph. I'll find out tomorrow and I'll post the fishing report by Monday.

Good luck fishing.