Great Lakes Forum

SheepheadHunter & I headed out of Ecorse after work today. We fished by US Steel from 5:30 to 8:30 PM. The water was VERY clear. We could see our jigs down more than 5 feet.

I drop my jig down to the bottom, jigged it 2 or 3 times them something on. Ended up pulling in some weeds tangled up with a lot of fishing line. After getting that mess taken care of I go to drop my jig back down & before it could get to the bottom, BAM, fish on. From the hard hit I thought that it was maybe a big smallie or maybe a musky. The fish starts to race downriver then I thought she got off when she headed towards the surface then back down again & wrapped me up in the trolling motor then went to the other side of the boat. I could just imagine what my face looked like. This was the best fight I've ever had with a fish. The fish started to surface again on the other side of the boat & came within a foot of the surface & 3 feet from the net then the 6lb fluoro leader broke & off she went. It was either a king salmon or a steelhead. Very exciting while it lasted.  ;D ;D ;D

As I was tying up a fresh jig, SheepheadHunter pulls in a small female that was spewing eggs all over the boat. He was pumped up because he was beating me in the walleye count within the first 10 minutes of fishing. For some reason he thought he was finally going to beat me walleye fishing. LOL, ya right. Like that's going to happen.  ;D ;)  >:D

We ended up boating 11 walleye & we both lost between 2 to 3 each. Of the 11 walleye 6 were small females (all under 20") that were spewing eggs. All the females were released. The only other fish caught was 1 white bass, no smallies or sheephead. We did catch a lot of garbage (plastic bags, old line etc.).

The hot bait was a green 1/2 oz (for me) & a 3/4 oz with either a Fin-S smelt or Fluke baby bass. Most fish were hooked on the stinger hook. The big factor was the fluoro leader. It out fished the Fireline Crystal (tied direct) 3.5 to 1. Females were caught in 20 to 28 fow & the males in 30 to 40 fow.

We talked to a boat with 3 guys that had been fishing since 8:30AM up until 6:30 PM. They fished from LSC down to Wyandotte & didn't catch any walleye. They just caught some smallies & white bass. We didn't see any other boats catching fish, though most boats were fishing by Mud Island or the tip of Fighting Island. We talked to 4 other boats of guys at the launch & only 1 of them had walleye (2 from handling by the Ren Cen).

I think one of the reasons guys weren't catching the walleye is because they were fishing too shallow. I was marking a lot of fish & baitfish in deeper water.

(http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j67/zibjones/IMG_1048.jpg)

Those look tasty, Zib. Good job.

 Good looking eaters, I'll take those all day long.