Great Lakes Bass Fishing Forum

Thinking about taking a short trip to Torch and Grand Traverse Bay for a few days in early August. I have spent a lot of time on the bay in June but never later in the summer. Any tips for either lake? What kind of patterns should I expect? Any starting locations would be appreciated. Thanks for any help.

It will be a normal summer pattern, shallow early day and off deeper points with scattered structure throughout the day.  Torch is just basically point hopping and crotch of bay areas. Mostly on the west side of the lake where the wind doesn't pound the shorelines. Alden, the ball field south of alden, Clam river area, the boy scout camp on the east side. The bay is about the same, leeward sides of points on the east shore. Yuba, petobego, elk rapids, eastport.  West side rock piles along shore up towards old mission harbor and the harbor itself.

Quote from: TheFishinPollock on July 22, 2018, 06:54:48 PM
It will be a normal summer pattern, shallow early day and off deeper points with scattered structure throughout the day.  Torch is just basically point hopping and crotch of bay areas. Mostly on the west side of the lake where the wind doesn't pound the shorelines. Alden, the ball field south of alden, Clam river area, the boy scout camp on the east side. The bay is about the same, leeward sides of points on the east shore. Yuba, petobego, elk rapids, eastport.  West side rock piles along shore up towards old mission harbor and the harbor itself.

Thanks for the tips.

When not rough on Torch I've been able to find some big smallies along the east side just fishing straight down the various sand drops along the edge but some of them even more up on the big flats. Easier for me than fishing 20-35 feet deep on the steep drops and few deeper flats that aren't 'trout-deep.'

I move along at a constant, fairly high speed casting straight down the edges with spinnerbaits, swimbaits, even swimming a tube on a jig head so my lure covers as much of the edge as possible covering lots of water to find those smallies that are scattered along it. The smallies come and go. You might even see swarms of them if you're lucky.

There are better stretches and slower stretches. Some of them correspond to the better spawning areas but there are some really good edges on flats where not many bass spawn. I'm assuming it is related to where the bait goes.

The good edges look good. I pick a lot of them out just by looking at the Google satellite images. If it looks obvious and exceptional at that level it is probably a better edge for bass.

I haven't fish GTB much in the heat of the summer. When I have I did better fishing the big sand drops towards the southeast of East Bay. Or fishing along the drop near Elk Rapids just looking for the biggest schools of bait. Seemed like the best way to find the most smallies for me. I'm assuming some of them move around a lot.

The time I ran GTB down from Lake Charlevoix I saw so many awesome looking rock bars but didn't find many smallies. I'm thinking many of the smallies are homebodies that live most of the year in smaller areas similar to the ones TheFishinPollock mentions. It seems like the known areas produce often while unpopular areas don't produce much. I don't know that at all but guess that may be part of the GTB puzzle.