Great Lakes Bass Fishing Forum

GreatLakesBass.com member dpc1190 invited me to fish with him on Thursday, July 24, 2015 out on Portage Lake Chain in Pinckney. I haven't been there in a number of years so I was glad to have a chance to return.

Not knowing what the latest is on the lakes I went with an old pattern I used to enjoy in my ancient bass club tournament days - fishing weed humps and lines in the morning with topwater. dpc1190 and his son-in-law Todd, also with us, liked that idea too and had Pop'Rs all ready to go.

Todd had a big bass on quick but it got off in the weeds. They each caught a few on their favorite Pop'R while my popper was being mostly ignored. There was some good topwater activity with minnows and small panfish being pushed up and busted by bass.

We also had to watch out for schools of gar that were sticking their snouts out of the water cruising the surface over deeper water. But it wasn't too hard to see which schools were bass and which were gar.

I broke out a pearl clear Sammy because I wasn't getting bit as well as they were. Unfortunately that is when the gulls decided to come in to attack too and they always like the Sammy! Oh boy.

It started to get to be a pain. I had 1 gull pick up my Sammy and fly with it a short ways, and they would not it alone long enough for me to work it right. When I could work it right walking the dog I started getting bit. I hollered at the gull to go get his bait! Leave mine alone! Honest I was just kidding but that darn gull took me serious and nailed dcp1190's Pop'R so I'm taking all the blame.

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It was dpc1190's first gull. It had just grabbed my line and carried the Sammy but the Pop'R has a nice flashy tail hook and the gull nailed that too fast to pull away from. So he had to reel it slowly to the boat where Todd wrapped it in a towel at the side of the boat.

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Todd expertly performs minor surgery on the gull to remove a hook from its beak by keeping its eyes covered with a towel while working on it in the boat.

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The gull is released back into the wild flying away possibly with its pride damaged but not really a lot smarter maybe. We had to do some moving for about half an hour to try to keep the gulls off our topwater lures. The topwater was working and we didn't want to abandon it while the bass were still busting.

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Later in the morning after Todd had left us for some errands, dpc1190 and I motored over to Baseline Lake and the Sammy was just on fire there. We fished humps and weedlines and they were crashing the Sammy every few minutes but not so in love with the Pop'R anymore. I loaned one to dcp1190 and he had 1 bass hit his Sammy 3 TIMES! It was a fun morning.

We tried some worming, cranking and frogs in the smaller lakes and caught a couple on frogs including 1 in Little Portage that missed my frog once shallow, and then I saw it cruising through an opening. I tossed the frog out in front of the bass' direction and the bass crushed the Horny Toad! Too bad it wasn't a bigger bass, but it was fun.

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I caught a hybrid panfish that looked like a cross between a pumpkinseed and a rock bass on a Texas-rigged Power Worm. I was thinking I would take small fish prize of the day (only an honorary title) but dpc1190 whipped me bad when he got this tiny panfish to nail a small jerkbait!

It was a fun day that we may try to repeat at some point. The topwater bite was the best by far and this year is Topwater Bass Year (so far).