Opener Report

[raywriter]

Two friends and I fished south of Gladstone from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. with a ninety minute lightning/rain break back on shore. We landed 16 fish - eleven walleye and five pike. We kept four eater size walleyes and released all others. Some because they were undersized and others because we did not need lots of fish. We used flat-lined minnow imitating cranks, bottom bouncer/crawler rigs, and one eighth ounce jigs depending on the areas we fished and how much water we had to cover. Overall, we had a lot of fun, and I believe we would have taken more fish if we had not had to come in during the worst of the storms that passed through.

[The Bait Shop Guy]

Pretty tough bass bite in the Escanaba River this evening. My dad and I only landed 2 fish. Boat control was pretty tough with the wind ripping right down the river, especially with my bow mount on the fritz! Water in the river was about 65 degrees! I hoped that would help negate the the post frontal conditions a little, (it didn't!)

This mid week opener really cut down the number of people we saw at the shop. Still, we had several good reports from the upper bay, the south side of Gladstone, and Ford River. Some on cranks, most on crawler harnesses.

How'd everyone else do?

[nitecrawler128]

By the time I could make it out after work, the winds were screamin' out of the NW! I usually never do good shallow on northerlies, so I headed to the Hunters Point/Narrows area to try and drag some deep harnesses. I've never had a problem with boat control using a 42" drift sock in a 17' aluminum boat... but I was having problems... GPS speeds were .8- 1.8 WITHOUT the trolling motor on (too fast for harnesses). Didn't mark too much, wasn't getting bit, and quite honestly not having that much fun... so I headed to seek refuge in lesser waves. I switched to cranks so I could fish at 2mph and ended up getting 7 before calling it quits in 9-14 FOW, but I must add that I already had a tip from a friend who was out earlier as to the location of some fish... and he was right, they were still there.