Great Lakes Bass Fishing Forum

I can tell already that 2017 is going to be an interesting and challenging year for bass fishing at some venues. The one that is already surprising me a lot is little Round Lake (north of Lansing). I hit for the first time on May 25th. I was greeted by a LOT of weeds!!

Lots of crinkly cabbage with a little bit of browner cabbage mixed in. Lots of weird grasses shallow and thick, big patches of green milfoil all over the lake! My concern immediately was there is a lot of cover right now for not a huge bass population to hide in!! Where to start?!?

I always say when in doubt start on the points! That's what I did. A shoreline broad, flat point with a defined weed edge and some weeds trailing out a short way into relatively deeper water. I started fishing fast in the morning - throwing a green gizzard shad KVD 2.5 (hoping the bigger size would get down into the weeds a little more and maybe grab some bigger bass). What I grabbed though at first was a bunch of pike!!!!

This seems to be the year of the pike already. I had 5 pike on in the first 15 minutes!!! They would slam the square bill on the pause, or when it popped free of a strand of weeds. I even had one come up out of deeper water to slam the shallow crankbait!! This was going to get old fast...

(http://glb.glwimg.com/images/1st-round-lake-bass-of-season-kvd-25-20170525_082820_HDR.jpg)
My 4th bite was a small bass that came off quickly. Then in about the same spot where I saw some minnows skipping I hooked this small bass - my first tiny bass of 2017 on Round Lake. Well... it's a start...

(http://glb.glwimg.com/images/small-round-lake-bass-deposit-spin20170525_091625_HDR.jpg)
After getting slammed by a few more pike, I decided to switch tactics from the pike-loved square bill to the chartreuse-white Deposit Spin. Pike bites slowed way down (victory!) and the bass on the shallow flats still seemed to want to bite it! I caught this slightly bigger bass next.

(http://glb.glwimg.com/images/little-bigger-bass-round-lake20170525_103909_HDR.jpg)
I moved to some better looking weeds and caught a better-sized bass on the Deposit Spin spinnerbait again. An aggressive bite so that was a good sign. But I wasn't finding any nice bass yet.

(http://glb.glwimg.com/images/keeper-round-lake-largemouth-on-bullet-craw20170525_111522_HDR.jpg)
I moved to the one really big point and tossing off the side of it out near the tip I finally caught a solid bass casting a Texas-rigged large size Nemesis Baits Bullet Craw in the watermelon gold-flake color!

But that was the only good bite I got going around the whole point. I stuck to mid-depth flats and near outside and inside weed edges near the drops for the time I had left. I caught a few more pike and small bass, and that was it. Not quite the day I would expect for me and Round Lake but it's a new year, and that means figuring them out THIS year, not by what worked in the past. I didn't do it today but I had a feeling going into the weeds might be in my near future though usually near the end of May the property owners BOMB the weeds and the lake becomes a sparsely weeded, brown, sickly-weeded dark water hole the rest of the season (usually).