Gull Lake Fishing

[dartag]

Looking at the DNR site I see Gull Lake has 29 tournaments scheduled already.   I think there was another west side lake that had a lot of tournaments last year.   I had the data but seem to have lost it.

Guys who are complaining about our East side lakes being overfished should look at the west side and be happy.

[Chewy]

I had a friend tell me last week that Austin Lake in Portage had more tournaments than any lake in the state last year.  I guess he found that info on the DNR site.  Gun Lake holds a lot of tournaments also.  Lots of lakes over here but not many are big enough to hold tournaments on.   

[dartag]

25 on Austin so far.  Looks like there are a few days in between events.   

[djkimmel]

Austin Lake was 2nd overall only behind Lake St. Clair last year. 1st if you count inland lakes only. Very popular lake for bass tournaments. There are an incredible amount of bass tournaments on the West side.

Michigan, for bass tournaments, is kind of like 5 or 6 states mixed into one. 1) You have the Lake St. Clair/Erie 'world.' 2) You have the SE Michigan-not-on-Lake St. Clair/Erie world. 3) You have the SW Michigan world. 4) You have the West Michigan world. 5) You have the Northern Michigan world - smaller, but there - and maybe it should really be 2 or 3 of its own 'planetoids' since there are distinct areas up there too, especially if you consider the small crowd around Alpena area that fishes mostly there and no where else? 6) The world hardly anyone knows - the U.P. (it's that mysterious land and lakes ABOVE the Mackinaw Bridge) - smaller yet, but it does exist.

These are all like distinct species somewhat in general of bass tournament anglers - some intermixing but not a ton.

[Schoolycustom]

Speaking from experience, Austin gets PUMMELED every year. I can't even imagine the hundreds of pounds of Senkos soaking up water in the bottom of that lake. Nice launch, the entire thing is shallow and it has good population. All those combined, attract a lot of tournaments. I basically grew up on the lake, so I will miss it, but I'm also happy to be up North where the pressure isn't as bad. 

[djkimmel]

Less pressure is nice when you can get it... BUT it's also nice to see a lake get fished that hard and still produce well enough to keep people coming back (I may have heard some kind of famous anglers 'secretly' fish Austin a lot real early and real late in the year too).