6/26/15, Saginaw Bay, Au Gres, Fishing Report

After a few days off the water, my clients from various parts of southeast Michigan and I hit the water with tough conditions indeed. We had a fairly stiff, northeast wind all day with waves in the three to four foot being pushed down from Lake Huron proper. With conditions like that, we had only one logical choice of a fishing area: Right out front of Au Gres and in close enough for protection from the winds that Gravely Shoal provided. We set up for our first trolling pass in 28 feet of water near the Gravely Shoal and trolled with the wind southwest. I started out with six spinner/crawler rigs set right on the bottom, but kept two more up about 20' down from the turbulent surface with a 35' setback. Those high lines took our first three bigger fish, so I naturally switched over to more of those rigs, but when the clouds rolled in about 45 minutes into the troll , that "high bite" died and we never took another hit up off bottom for the rest of the day. We picked up nine keeper walleyes on our first pass from point to point, but when I set up for our second pass, I put all the lures right on bottom and our hit rate went way up. We made it about half way through that second pass and had put our legal limit of 20 walleyes in the box. Spinner color did not mater as long as it was trolled on the bottom at slow speeds of 1.3 to 1.4 mph. I had to put one 26" drift sock into the water to attain that trolling speed. We marked a lot of fish in that area, but not all of them were walleyes. We also caught two white suckers: the first ones of the year. We also caught a sheephead that was so big that it ranked as probably one of the biggest one I've ever seen before. Most of our walleyes caught were 18-20 inchers, but we did catch some that were undersized and had to throw them back with several being 14-3/4 inchers. Some were also bigger, chunkers too that were well over 20 inches. All in all, despite the tough conditions, it was a very fun day on the water and everyone on my boat had a lot of fun in the process.

Capt. Mike Veine

6/26/15, Saginaw Bay, Au Gres, Fishing Report