New Lakes, Up North

NumenOn the Water

Date:  September 13 - 17, 2017

Body of Water:  Various Antrim County lakes including Lake Bellaire, Clam Lake and Torch Lake

Boat:  Numenon

With:  Generally alone, but A joined me for a couple of sessions

Target:  Smallmouth Bass and Muskellunge

Time: Various, but usually starting by 7 AM and ending by 4 PM; but with one evening trip to 8 PM

Conditions: In a word, glorious; in two words, too glorious.  Generally very nice, if not too hot, and little wind.  Water temperatures ranged from about 68 to 72 degrees F.

9-13-17: Lake Bellaire; I arrived at the "Fisherman's Paradise" public launch facility and was in place in Lake Bellaire's clear water (> 5 feet visibility) by 7 AM.  I chose to start on a prominent weed edge near the lake's inlet, but neither jerks, tubes, topwaters, drop-shots, cranks, spy-baits nor vertically jigged baits produced a bite in the first four hours.  I fished from 4 to 50 feet of water, was always in good-looking water and was usually over promising sonar signals; but nothing was working.

Lake Bellaire in Michigan's Antrim County made a good first impression.

I made a big move to the lake's northern side, and along a prominent sand point I picked up an inside weed edge along a precipitous break into the depths. Not only did this remind me of last year's Douglas Lake situation, I quickly spotted a couple very sizable bass causing this edge.  It was time to fish like I was on Douglas Lake!

My weightless, Texas-rigged Senko (watermelon flake) was visibly rejected by a couple of bass, but a couple of others showed some interest as I slowly worked the bait in four or five feet of water.  At 11:52 AM, I got my first bite of the day while blind casting this type of water.  I was pleased to bring in a fat, 18.75-inch, 4-pound smallie!

It took almost 5 hours to get a bite, but it was a good one!  There's something about this color Senko for smallmouth bass in clear water (IMHO.)

A smallmouth like this will always make my day.

An hour later, I switched gears again, and moved to another prominent point with a weed-covered edge.  My time was waning and I wanted to fish faster, so I threw a DT10 along these edges, if only to cover more water.  At about 1 PM, I received my second strike of the day; an 18.9-inch, 4-pound, near-twin of the first.  This fish smashed the bait near the surface, just as I had begun my retrieve.

No. 2 was slightly longer, but not quite as fat.  She smashed a DT10 crank right at the start of my retrieve.

I continued to cover new water while revisiting the areas that had produced such nice fish, all while alternating between the two baits.  I ended the day at 4 PM with two additional (but small) pike on the DT10 and a tiny perch that grabbed a chatter-bait.  Along the way, I saw some more very nice bass along the inside weed edge, and I decided to return to the lake in morning despite the slow day, overall.  I knew that there were quality bites to be had, and I hoped to build on what I had learned about this new lake this day.  Two bass rarely qualifies as a Great Day, but a day with two 4-pounders is never a Bad Day.  Plus, having enjoyed the company of eagles, loons, coyotes, mergansers and a mink, how could I not return?

9-14-17: Lake Bellaire; Conditions were a bit foggier than the day before, and I was in place on an inside weed edge of choice by 7 AM.  I chose to concentrate on the inside weed edge in 4 or 5 feet of water, especially in areas where I'd caught or seen sizable bass the day before, and then expanding from there.  I started with top-waters, jerks and a twitching Rapala, all to no avail.  I then resorted to the Texas-rigged Senko, and at 8:15 I had a 17.25-inch smallie in the net.  I followed this up with a 14-inch squeaker at 9:15; but the bite was slow. I mixed in the DT10 and a bass-colored Rapala Scatter Crank while I expanded my search.  At about 10 AM, I returned to my "best" empirical area, and quickly caught 15.75- and 19+-inch smallies on the Senko. This last fish was even bigger than the previous day's!

Thursday was slightly more gentle and seemed fishier.  It was, if one was willing to work at it.

Now on a realistic quest for my "limit" of bass, I continued to poke around new areas offering the scruffy weed line along a drop.  I saw some nice bass (marked for possible targeting in there future) and caught a very nice rock bass on a Ned Finesse jig.  I also caught Bass No. 5 on the Senko, but it was short and so didn't really count.  By 12:15 PM, I was pressing for the limit, but confident that persistence would pay off.  Now fishing almost exclusively with the Senko (having switched to Plain Jane Brown, since I'd lost my last one of the favored color), I continued saturating my areas with long casts.  Since just about all of my worthwhile bites had occurred on the initial fall, I would let it fall and retrieve with only a couple of twitches and another fall, before it was time to reel in and make another cast.  At 1:20 PM, on a waypoint from the previous day when I'd seen a hog on the edge of a minor sand point, I finally caught a legitimate limit fish, another fat 17-incher.

Another solid Lake Bellaire smallmouth

The biggest bass of the trip fell for a Texas-rigged, weightless brown Senko fished along the inside weed edge.

Now, it was time to try to cull.  I continued my pattern of expanding my known, productive areas and baits. I mixed in a swim jig/underspin along with the cranks.  But these continued to be ignored, so I threw the Senko, too, just to keep the bass honest.  

At about 2:30 PM, I set the hook with the Senko, and a fish raced towards the boat.  I was able to keep light tension on the fish, but it threw my hook at the surface with a classic bass leap.  This smallmouth was a GIANT, much bigger than anything else I'd caught this trip, and perhaps larger than any bass I've caught this season.  This fish reminded me that it's been a while since I've lost a fish of any significance; in addition to being a true trophy, this bass would have bumped my nice, approximate-13.5-pound limit to perhaps 18 pounds.  That might have been the heaviest limit of brown bass that I've ever caught in a single day.

I fished through this area again, about an hour later.  I chose to present the Ned Finesse jig. When this produced just another Rockie, I decided to call it quits for the day.

Amazingly enough, the day had turned out to be everything I could have asked for; not as hot, still, or bright, and with more and bigger fish!  Plus, I'd enjoyed an owl, cranes and an encounter with an enormous snapping turtle!


9-15-17: Lake Bellaire:  Conditions were clear and bright; the water held at 70-72 degrees F.  This was just a  short trip because of the day's schedule, but I had a certain bass in mind, and I was quite confident tat I would get a couple of chances at quality fish.  I spent a fair amount of four hours on the water throwing baits that should have worked; top-waters, twitching Raps, jerks, drop-shots and cranks; but only received bites on the Texas-rigged Senko.  And while I visited the lair of the previous day's lunker several times and showed her several bait options, she never re-appeared.  I ended up catching just two short smallmouths and a rock bass.

For the remainder of the day, we switched our base to connected Clam Lake, where we spent the weekend.  We also enjoyed a boat ride from Clam to Lake Bellaire on the Grass River.

Numenon got to stay "inside" for the weekend - at our Clam Lake rental cottage.

9-16-17: Clam Lake and Torch Lake:  My fishing day started on Clam at about 6:45 AM.  The water here was more heavily stained than Lake Bellaire (upstream), and lots of boat traffic developed by 10 AM or so.  Still, I was accompanied in the quiet portion of the morning by the yips and howls of a pack of coyotes, and I watched a bald eagle soaring, perching and fishing.

The bass fishing proved to be tough!  My pattern from Lake Bellaire didn't exist here (there were no no real sand flats with a fringe of weeds plummeting into the depths.  Instead, Clam offered more conventional weed beds out to about 10 feet of water, and then a more gentle drop into modest 20-foot depths.  Plus, there was a fair amount of current; Clam is more like a river than a lake.)  There was too much chopped grass on the surface to use top-waters effectively, and jerks and drop-shots did not produce (although I was quite frequently over some good-looking marks on the sonar.)

I relocated a bit downstream near some deeper water marinas and switched to a DT10.  I did catch a small pike on a distinct, hard-bottomed point.  With the building boat traffic, I decided to go back to the cottage and cool off and re-tool.  It was a scorcher, and Clam Lake supposedly holds muskies.  I would target them next!

A accompanied me as we hit the water at about Noon on a Muskie Quest.  I chose to troll a simple, 3-rod spread so that we could manage among the weeds and boat traffic; and we tried to target "just off" the weedlines in 8-12 feet of water.  If we wandered into the deeper basin, that would be okay, because any muskies would still be able to see our lures swimming above.  Trolling at about 3.75 to 4.5 mph, I presented:

• Bucher Deep Diving Depth Raider - on the outside of the presentation
• Storm Flat Stick - throbbing just below and behind the prop wash
• Various smaller, slimmer jerk-bait style cranks on the inside

A drove while I tended the rods.  Weeds were an obvious issue, but doable with her driving. As we passed an obvious weed point along the north shore at about 3.9 mph, the Depth Raider started to hit the weeds.  I went to clear it, and just as I started to crank it in, a fish smashed the bait.

The low-30-inch Great Lakes Strain muskie provided two excellent, ballistic leaps, and A provided a nice net job.  It was my first Great Lakes Strain (spotted) muskie!

Clam Lake muskie!  She ate a deep-diving Bucher Depth Raider trolled along the weed edge at about 3.9 mph.

I know we probably should have quit at that point, but we kept at it for another 2.5 hours.  We adjusted our presentation to shallower areas with smaller baits and scored a hard-hitting, but small, pike.  This fish hit a gold Rapala Scatter Minnow, trolled about 40 feet back at about 3.5 mph.  Note, it came from an "interesting area" on the GPS mapping system; it is a useful tool to help find fish!

Too hot and with the lake too busy, I gassed up at the local marina.  The attendant reported that she'd never caught a bass on Clam; just sunnies and pike.  For bass, she went to Bellaire.  I had enough info; I'd be fishing for muskies again, the next morning.

But first, we had a beautiful evening with calm conditions; at about 4 PM, A and I hit beautiful Torch Lake, to look for some big smallies.  This was my first exposure to this large, deep, clear lake, and so I relied on my GPS mapping system to identify a couple of prominent points with flats of fishable depths (let's say, 20-40 feet of water) nearby.  As I cruised these areas, I dropped waypoints wherever I saw clustered fish or other features of interest.  I then came back to each of these and presented drop-shot baits to whatever waited below.  I fished a dozen or more spots, but received just a couple of half-hearted pecks, and no real bites.  I don't know if I'd marked gobies, baby perch or shiners, but they didn't seem to be bass!  Running out of time, I switched to a jerk and worked it erratically over 20-30 feet of water, hoping to call up a fish.  But I guess that I'd used up my good luck for the day!

Sunset on Torch Lake

9-17-17: Clam Lake;  This was another shortish session, since we'd have to pack and hit the road for home.  The day was unseasonably hot, hazy, and a little wind was finally starting to develop.  With a legitimate shot at encountering a big muskie and good top-water conditions, I started my Muskie Hunt at 6:45 AM.  I threw Pacemaker and Naze lures along weed and structure edges, and repeatedly visited the area that coughed up the previous day's fish.  Unfortunately, I didn't raise any fish.

At about 8 AM, I switched to a Windell's Harasser bucktail spinner in chartreuse and black.  On my third cast or so, I felt a faint, isolated tap.  Two cranks later, I barely paused my retrieve, and the lure got hit pretty hard.  It was only a 24-inch pike, but it was still nice to put a bend in my rod.

I continued with this pattern, focusing on about 5 to 10 feet of water with weeds.  I caught two more pike, both in about 6.5 feet of water, and both in the close vicinity of my successful muskie spot.  One pike was small, but the last was a decent 26-incher, the largest pike of this trip.  This particular fish appeared to be blind in its right eye, and it smashed my bucktail right at my feet as I started the turn into my figure-eight.  I must have turned the right way for her to see it!  Regardless, it was an excellent strike, and for a brief moment, I thought I'd done it!

Not the greatest picture and not the biggest pike; but this half-blind pike smashed my bucktail right at my feet.

Successful Clam Lake Muskie-Hunting Lures

I continued through the morning, but ultimately switched to a larger Spanky No. 10 bucktail, perhaps with the thought that a larger bait would be more visible or appealing to any local muskellunge.  There was no indication of this being the actual case, and when I passed through my "spot" one more time without raising a fish, I knew it was time to go home.

Finally, I saw a modest boat docked nearby with two rods in holders, Believers rigged for trolling.  At least somebody else thinks that muskie fishing here is a viable option!

Heading in for the last time, at least for this trip ...

What do I have to say about this?

Just like I wrote last year that I would come back, I did, but with a variation on the theme. Last year's trip was tough to beat, but with 2017's excellent weather, accommodations and fishing opportunities, I may have done so.  None of the fishing was easy, but most was gratifying and there were some beautiful fish to be admired.  Add in the lack of any real problems, some good company, and perhaps this year I was able to even better enjoy myself, which let me work harder at the fishing, which produced even better fishing results.  I'm caught in a pretty good cycle of circumstances!

Fast-forwarding to 2018, the conference event that has brought me north these last two years is being held in Kalamazoo.  That's a bit less appealing than these last two destinations from my fishing perspective, so perhaps I will use that time to go chase False Albacore on Cape Cod or fish in the Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.  The timing should be right!