Great Lakes Bass Fishing Forum

We took our annual family vacation this Labor day weekend to Houghton lake and I actually managed to fish from 6:00am to 10:00am on saturday, sunday, and monday. Here is the report.

I started out right in front of the cabin we rented on Saturday morning (Our cabin was just south of Houghton Lake Heights across from the funland park) There is a nice drop off that goes from 2 feet down to 5 feet with weeds filling in the trench that was about 100yards wide before it shallowed back up again. I was throwing a Pop-r and had no luck. I switched to a black bitsy flip in 1/4 oz with a zoom green pumpkin chunk trailer and that was the only rod I needed the rest of the weekend.

I worked this weed trench all the way north out in fron of Lymans and it started to drop off to about 9ft of water. I managed to catch several very nice largemouth in the 2 1/2 to 3lb range and one smallie that was 4 3/4 lbs. I also eneded up catching 9 walleyes with 5 of them being keepers in the 16 inch range. All of this happened in the 4 short hours I had on the lake. I GPS'd the coord. for every bass that I caught just so I could see if there was any pattern to there location and it turned out they were all within 10 feet of the defined weed edge located in that area.

I went back to the cabin place and was the talk of all of the fisherman there as they had been doing very poorly for the walleye's and couldnt belive that I was catching them on a bass jig with out a leech or a minnow.

On sunday I went back out to the same weed egde and was fishing my hotspots when a Pontoon boat full of guys seen me catch a nice walleye and they came within 10 feet of my boat and dropped there anchor. ( This happened alot. I guess there are lots of bent rod chasers up there). As I was moving down the break line there was an older gentelman in a v-bottom boat that just kept circling me as I wasent moving along very quickly and finally I got curioues as to what was going on and asked him what he was doing. He said that he had the spot I was sitting on marked and was wating for me to leave so he could anchor. I told him he just should have asked sooner and he could have already been fishing. So he motors right next to me and drops anchor.

I sat and talked with him for about 15 minuts and he said how refreshing it was to have a Bass guy move out of an area so he could fish in it with out some sort of confrontation.  I gave the man the 3 walleye I had already caught that morning in exchange for a cup of his coffe and I was on my way again. I manged 9 largemouth all in the same range as the day before and 7 keeper walleye for the day that all went back in the lake except for the 3 I had given away.

On Monday I only had 3 hours to fish and went back to the same area I had camped on for the previous 2 days and caught 8 more keeper bass and lost a giant pike I would guess in the 40" range when he finally shredded my 65lb braid. I had quite a following of boats moving along as I was fighting that fish and you would think I just lost the superbowl when my line broke from all of the sigh's from the on lookers.

If I would have had 100 bitsy flips I bet I could have sold them all to all of the boats watching as everybody wanted to know what Iwas using and were to buy them. All weekend I fished around the same group of people and It was very enjoyable to relax and talk to all of these people while fishing a cast away from them and nobody was bothered by it. To bad it is not the same on St.Clair.

The walleye up there are crazy.

When NBAA was last up there for the classic, we caught tons of them.  Our best pattern was in 3 feet of water, on a mud flat, in the middle of the day, 100 degrees out, flat water and they were slamming traps.  The owners of the cabin we stayed at went out every night with bobbers and leeches and usually skunked and we were bringing back a limit a day!

Hunlee not like Houghton Lake as bass are small there!!!!!!Hunlee fish there many time but allsway get small bass!!!!!Best eating bass for Hunlee are 3 pound an bigger!!!!!!!Hunlee prefur 5 an 6 pounder for eating but a number of small will do at time!!!!!!Walleye are good at said lake with people getting them on jig an crank bait with Hunlee gettin a few!!!!

hunlee