Is there a better way to seize a three day weekend then to take a trip to the Upper Peninsula of the beautiful state of Michigan? The weather was amazing, and the fishing steadily kept pace with the gorgeous three day forecast.

Keith and I lugged my 12′ portabote to the Yooper early Saturday AM after a 3 am wake up call. It took us no less than 8 hours to make the trek, but it is always well worth it. It didn’t take us long to unpack before getting the boat ready and heading out for some fishing!

bon voyage!

Now, I have never been up north this early in the season, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. The lake water was much warmer than I expected, with some sandy bottomed areas pushing the mid 70s. Other parts of the lake were much cooler around the 60 degree mark.

I called Andrew and asked to see what was working for him on his North Central WI lakes, and he told me to find rocks. He also mentioned that his smallies were shallow. During my summer months of fishing Yooper smallies, I usually get em off of ledges ranging from 6-30 FOW, so I knew I was going to have to take a different approach.

Keith and I rigged up with the yooper special, a #5 mepps, white skirt. It catches anything and everything. Its also a great bait to throw and cover water looking for active fish. Keith hooked up again on his first yooper cast (did the same thing last year) and brought in a snake pike.

It was a promising sign. Soon after I popped a smallie on my mepps over a rock pile in about 6 FOW, and I knew right then we were onto something special. I had found a submerged rock pile that began around 2 fow out to 15 fow and covered about a half block section of the shoreline. The fish were stacked up on it!!

I tossed on an Andrew special, orange xrap, and caught fish in consecutive casts. I also hooked into a pike and had it clip my line after bringing him into the boat.

After a quick retie, I decided to carry on with the xrap minus a steel leader and hope for the best. Well, that lasted all of 5 additional minutes before the next pike bit me off for good.

I decided to plastic it up. Keith thought the same. I put on a trixie series 5″ worm and Keith decided to work an IKA. We both caught fish, and we caught them drift after drift after drift.

Not once did we complain about fishing being too easy (ahem Andrew). We were having fun, and we wanted to keep at it. The two of us decided to work the rock pile for the remainder of the night and we did – catching probably close to 40 fish.

For Day 2, we decided to try to stick a few pike, so we shot to a bay on the other end of the Grand Sable Lake (2.4 miles across) with the 3hp (only took us about 35 mins to make the trip). I had a feeling that we would find some pike off of this nice ledge with great laydowns.

I was right.

This time around, I threw on a steel leader with my xraps and we boated about a dozen or so pike. Nearly all though were snakes. The pike ranged from 20-27″. For the most part, I didn’t bother with pictures as I would shake the fish off with hemostats when we got em to the boat’s edge. However, I did take one pic with this speckled (and parasitic) version of a snake

After messing around with the pike for a couple of hours, we shot across the lake for round two with the smallies. Just like Day 1 -we found them again, and boated probably close to 40 more smallies. Same patterns from day 1 – orange xraps, plastics, and inline spinners. We only lost a couple of baits to pike on Day 2 which was a nice thing.

A Nate Tessler pose

Day 3 was an abbreviated day of fishing for us, for it was our last day of the weekend trip. I wanted to get in a few hours of fishing before doing some house work and wrapping things up, so we went for the smallies again. I mean, how can you get bored of catching fish?? It’s great!

One of many, many doubles

Same program as the day before – dragging plastics picked off about 20 smallies for us. We had to conclude our trip and book it off the lake.

Oh, and what’s an out of state report without the nature-type pretty pics???

Grand Sable Falls

Grand Sable Dunes - Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Lake Superior Coastline

Au Sable Log Slide, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Twas Another fine Yooper trip, and a great time as always! I think the biggest bass may have hit 3.5#s, and most of our fish were in the 1.5 – 2# class. But hey, who cares when you’re catching 100 + fish!

I’ll be back up there for the 4th of July holiday looking for the big girl pike!!

Look who it is!!

I got Mike to briefly fish with me last Friday for some bass. We didn’t catch any, but I was pretty happy to see the guy holding a rod.

And now, for a long winded week of fishing -

Last Saturday I hit the fox with friends Tim and Clark for some wading. The game fish were not present, but sheephead kept our attention for a couple of hours before we decided to call it quits. Tim managed big fish of the day with a really ugly Buffalo.

Tuesday night I hit the lake front with Keith looking for smallies, but only one was to be had by Keith.

Keith and I were targeting feeding smallies off of some deeper rock piles. However, many of the recently caught smallies are bed protectors, so use your best judgement if you chose to go after them. I’ve always wondered if a bass will be reluctant to attack an invading goby after being hooked…

On another lakefront note, the perch have officially arrived. I spent Monday – Wednesday just waiting for Thursday – the day Lake Michigan hit 58 degrees. I got out Thursday morning and got some perching in before work. The action was steady, but not quite on fire. Keith and I took 16 jumbos home. Those perch just love eating plastic!

Saturday was the kickoff of the Illinois Chapter of Salmon Unlimited’s season of fishing. Team Brush & Roll finished 2nd in the 24′ and under division with a limit of Coho and a couple of Lake Trout mixed in.

We worked a program in deeper water for kings, but couldn’t keep them hos of the line!

It was definitely a great time off shore on Lake Michigan. We also had a few visitors stop by for some well needed rest -

This guy was pretty friendly!

The week concluded today with some perch fishing. Wow, was it a scorcher! Well, the weather was warm. Fishing, not so much.

Keith and I fished spot 1 for about 45 mins this morning and plucked off a few fish at first light, but the crowd of anglers grew and the fish disappeared. We decided to relocate to a much quitter and lesser none spot, and we managed to string up 17 nice fish. We then decided that we wanted to hit the daily limit, so we checked out spot #3 and picked up the remainder of our fish and called it a day.

At this point in the week, my camera had stopped working, so Keith snapped a cell phone pic of our stringer from spot 2.

Definitely a fun week, with plenty of fixing in the mix. Perching should really kick off this upcoming week so I expect to spend most of my time on the lakefront