Little Bay de Noc Fishing Reports

This past week was a week I look forward to every year.  Patrick and Jeff from the Chicago area and Patrick's Uncle Charlie from Pittsburgh came up to once again spend a week fishing Big and Little Bay de Noc.  I've fished with these guys for several years now, and we've been fortunate to have some really good days on the water.  We fish a lot for pike, bass, and occasionally even walleyes!  This years fishing was a little tough to say the least.  We got some really nice quality fish, but the overall numbers were way down from what we are used to.  The bass bite was much tougher and the unusually warm water temps have kept the really big pike from coming back into the weedbeds like we're accustomed to.  We caught some fish, and a few good ones, but the numbers were definitely down.  The one day we did concentrate mostly on walleyes we did quite well...bringing back 14.  That was last Monday, and we caught them doing a variety of things.  We caught a few jigging, caught a few trolling harnesses and caught a bunch drifting the outer bay just south of Gladstone along the east side.  Best baits for the bass were tubes in chartreuse, brown, and goby colors.  Drop-shotting was good using a variety of baits from Jackall I-Shads, Berkley gulp twitchtail minnows, and 3 inch Berkley gulp minnows.  Green pumpkin was a great color last week.  I also caught a few good smallies on paddletail swimbaits.  The 4.8 inch Keitech swimbaits were something I hadn't used before...but the fish ate em up!  The pike like em' too...so if you throw em' you better have a few extra swimbait jigs along.  We used 1/4 and 1/2 ounce jigheads with the swimbaits.  After thousands of casts and lots of sun and wind it feels good to have a couple days off the water.  Here's some pictures of this past weeks fishing.  The pike and bass fishing will only get better as the water cools off some, good luck from all of us in the Bay de Noc area.