Little Bay de Noc

Thought I’d post a brief report here…The Bay has been giving up Walleye very grudgingly and very few post spawn females.

I talked to several Guides and good fishermen that have been disappointed so far.

Opening day was horrible for most I talked to…many didn’t even catch a fish…a few caught small 8-10″ males.

There have been a few “flurries” of action since friday…but those “bite” windows were very brief.

Yesterday Guide’s Choice and I opted to get on the water after the T-Storms went through…even though we would be dealing with 10-15 mph North winds. We got on the water at 10 AM and scouted much of the deeper flats adjacent to the rivermouth areas. We marked a few pods of fish and proceeded to finesse them with various combinations of small (1/16) jigs and a bit of crawler or mini paddletail. The only forage this early is basically Mayfly larvae…locally called bloodworms.

We did catch 8 Mini Walleyes, two 10″ White Bass, two nice 10″ perch, and an alien Goby like critter with a spiked dorsal… He/she is Seagull food now!

We decided that the fish may be moving out of the Bay and headed south for the deep water of Green Bay. Sure enough we started marking lots of blue coconuts right on the bottom in 35-45 fow! It took two XXL driftsocks to get our drift down to under 0.5 mph but with 3/8oz jigs tipped with crawlers we connected. We caught a doz Eyes on the first 500yd drift…6 in the 17-20″ range… Three more drifts and we managed to net about 30 Walleye…6 more keepers. We kept our limit of these slim bodied nomadic males.

We were both impressed with the 7’0″ and 6’9″ SC Extreme rods…using small 9025 Pfleuger reels spooled with 6# Flouro we had no problem setting hooks on these timid biters. Sorry about the lack of pictures…with the dark sky, wind and frequent rain showers. I kept the camera in its waterproof bag.

Note* When fishing deep water its always a good idea to pull these fish up slowly…we only had one with a popped bladder and he went home for dinner.