Great Lakes Bass Fishing Forum

Wow, tough day on Big and Little Portage Lakes! Despite near perfect weather, today's tourney on Portage Lake was super tough.  After a couple nice fish quickly in practice on Monday, I thought that we would really smack em today, but just the opposite transpired.

For a lake that normally produces bags in excess of 16 pounds, todays winner came to the scales with a 5 bass limit barely making 11 pounds, but it was enough to best the 16 boat field.

With a massive weed kill leaving very little in the way of green weeds, my partner and I started near a weedline I had located on Monday that produced two nice fish in practice, but after two hours, we had not put a single keeper in the boat, so a quick spin over to Little Portage was in order.

Little portage had few green weeds also, and the pads were devoid of keeper fish, so back to big portage we went.  We did see three nice keepers in the channel, that were on the fly and not interested in baits.  Finally the deep side of the weedline on the South end of Big Portage produced a keeper, then another.  Both on skirted grubs.

A trip to the north end of Big Portage proved unproductive as well.  The pads on the north end produced several blow ups on frogs, but on two short takers.

All in all we landed less that 20 fish all day, with only three breaking the 14 inch line on the Golden Rule.