Little Bay de Noc Fishing Reports

Yesterday I had the chance to fish with Jim and Mike from lower Michigan.  Jim's family has a camp in LaBranch for deer hunting, but he hasn't fished the bays.  The walleye fishing has been very tough on Little Bay, so we headed over to Big Bay to start out walleye fishing, then switch to smallies if the "eyes" weren't biting.  We started out trolling Walleyes Choice (http://www.walleyeschoice.com) harnesses for walleyes on the outside edge of a weedbed.  We found some fish, but they were biting very light, except for the sheephead...they never bite light!  We landed one nice walleye, went back over the same spot and had a triple...only to lose all three.  We proceeded to lose six out of 7 walleye bites for some reason.  At noon I had enough of losing fish, so I took them to some of my favorite smallmouth spots, and the smallies didn't disappoint us.  We didn't keep track of how many we caught, but the quality was very good.  Most of the fish were over 3 1/2 pounds with a couple pigs just under 5 lbs.  Most of them were very fat and wow do they fight!!!  We caught an equal number on tubes and also drop-shot rigs with a variety of offerings from Jackyl I-Shads and crosstail shads and Berkley Realistix power minnows in smelt and emerald shiner. No need for live bait, especially when you plan on releasing all of them, which we did.  I just can't see keeping smallies to eat when you can get perch or walleye for the table.  They are too much fun to just catch once!!!  Here's some pics of yesterday's fish...good luck from all of us in the Bays de Noc area.