awhitney posted on May 12, 2011 22:09
Hello again fellow anglers,
I have some more first hand fishing information fresh from Lake Michigan for you. Fishing is slowly but steadily improving. I ran my first official charter of the season last night. We had a four hour trip from 4 to 8PM and picked up 6 nice kings and 1 small steelhead. Most of the fish are hanging around in stained water that is about 48 - 49 degrees on the surface. Last night this area was between 60 and 70 feet of water. For us the fish were from 15 to 31 feet down on downriggers and leadcore in 3 - 7 color lengths. They favored regular Mixed Veggies and Blue Mixed Veggie spoons in the standard and Stingray sized Stinger spoons. The Hello Darlin Dreamweaver spoon took a couple shots too. What most of that mean is blue/green, blue/yellow and green yellow with some orange thrown in on a silver spoon seems to be a good bet. Another boat fishing in the morning did well on similar colors but found fish to be more active between 30 and 40 foot down. Both of us hit fish out as far as 90 feet of water. The best fishing is still to come but it's definitely worth the effort. If you go WATCH FOR LOGS! There is a lot of debris floating around the muddy water line right now.
Bluegills and crappie are going pretty good with the recent warm weather. Fish are showing up in all the normal spots in the bayous and in shallow areas around local marinas that are mostly accessible only by boat. My son and a friend came home after a couple hours today with 15 gills, several of which were over 9 inches. Wax worms was their bait but worms of all varieties will be working on nice days like today. This same son, it must be nice to be on summer break, also went pike fishing on Muskegon Lake the other day. Fishing was a little slower than his last trip but a few hours effort yielded a couple pike over 30 inches and several more that were lost. Bomber Long A's in blue/chrome and black/chrome were the best combos. The bluegill fishing on both Muskegon and White Lakes should also be starting to get pretty good.
Walleye fishing slowed down over the weekend and I haven't heard from anyone in regards to the last few days success. Perch fishing on Lake Michigan out of Grand Haven seems to have come to a stop. The current is carrying most of the stained river water to the North but I haven't heard anyone bragging about jumbos in the holes to the South lately. This would fit the pattern as perch usually get tough to find for a while after Mothers Day. The only tip I can offer is look for several smaller boats clustered together and get near enough to watch for success. A friend of mine fishes out of Holland and his favorite method is to drift fish after the big schools start to break up. I know they're still out there but you're going to have to put your time in to figure them out.
For the river fisherman the recent dryer weather, last night not included, should have improved things. The sun and heat also should be generating some hatches for the fly fisherman to take advantage of.
It's a great time of the year to fish and the biggest problem you should have right now is trying to decide what type of fishing you want to do. Regardless, get out and enjoy the spring fishing while it lasts!
Good luck,
Matt Whitney