The Last Team Trout of 2024

I’ve been waiting for another opportunity to get out on the big lake in the small boat. We finally hit a good stretch of weather around Christmas and I was able to capitalize on a couple trips. This is one of those things that is very new to me and relatively adventurous with being out on Lake Michigan in the cold with a 16 foot boat. So I’m liking it a lot and I want to continue to learn, even though I also really want to go perch fishing.

I’ve made some advancements to my setup with Cannon Tracks and Dual Axis Rod Holders. After a couple trips with those I’ve got no regrets and the dual axis is definitely worth it over the single. There had been some good reports out of Muskegon and we thought about heading there. But I felt like Grand Haven could be even better if that river was puking out water. When we fished down there last February there were a lot of lakers eating shad and I had high hopes that was going on again.

We had pretty decent conditions but it would be getting windier the entire trip. My dreams were just big nasty laker after big nasty laker. I think our first fish was a lake trout followed by a couple nice steelhead and a brown. We had a nice mixed bag going but really no specific pattern other than no bites less than 15 feet. No bites on much close to the boat either, other than 1 steelhead that absolutely ripped a bandit crankbait on a 3 way rig. Fishing was steady and pretty dang good. I think we landed 8 and had about as many misses. A lot of those were lake trout that just buried it. One was a struggle to get out of the rod holder and another was a bite in the channel on the way in. It was blowing so hard during that one that just letting off the throttle stopped our forward progress. One of the more interesting things I found was a sweet beaver in a lake trout stomach. How that got there I don’t know but I will speculate that it just picked it up off the bottom somewhere in the channel.

We had a big duck hunt to get ready for the next day and I had to get to work for a bit. Trolling lost focus for a moment, well until Saturday’s duck hunt didn’t work out so well. It was an adventure as always and we didn’t let it get in the way of fun the rest of the day. That crushed the last little bit of patience I had for duck hunting in 2024 though. Cameron and I said lets just go fishing and put any plans for a cast and blast on the back burner. Somehow the forecast was favorable to get back out there but with it blowing so hard on Saturday we would have the perch gear ready just in case. I checked the NOAA Muskegon RECON buoy in the morning and was shocked that it was at .6 feet. Off we went and it turned out to be a great decision.

Cameron is boat shopping for a rig that will do it all so today was just going to fuel his fire for some cold water trolling. It’s always a good sign to be hooked up before the 4th rod is in the water. These short cores/flat lines don’t take much time to get out there. It took longer than expected to get the next bite and then the next bite. But finally we hit a double and things started getting wild. Since things close to the boat didn’t work well in Grand Haven, we ran all of our lines on planer boards today. We hit a triple and then circled around and it seemed like the area went dead. We did this several times where we would catch a bunch then go in and try and get more but it was just not as good. The lakers were releasing well in such shallow water (20-45 feet) but all our bites were suspended 20 feet down at the deepest. The biggest difference here is a lot of fish were puking up shad. I didn’t see any of that in Grand Haven so I think that explains the much better bite in Muskegon.

I was trying to take a picture with a big one and we sort of captured the freak out as another rod went off. As the day went off we just got more and more dialed in. Thinking back on it we could have made some more adjustments but we were busy enough already. My favorite moment was the middle rod going, then the inside rod going, then while fighting those 2 fish the outside rod goes all on the same time. Little did we know that we were just letting a trophy brown for Michigan waters just sit in the rod holder while we fought 2 nice lakers. They still don’t fight well trolling even in the cold water but I do love watching them stop those boards with their weight. There is definitely a jigging/casting MEGA Live opportunity out there but just not enough nice days to really try it yet. I’ve caught plenty of lakers jigging structure without MEGA Live but I can’t imagine how much more effective I could be with it. At the end of the day I don’t know how many we caught/lost but it was starting to rain pretty hard and we both had things we needed to do. We got all the rods back out and pointed it toward the pier figuring would just troll to the arms and pull the spread. It wasn’t a far distance but by the time we made it 4 of the 6 rods had come in with fish. Our best rod was a 100 copper with a Dreamweaver SS rasta goose but a 3 color leadcore, bandit (which is a new thing for us), and thin fins all caught fish.

It was a day to remember for sure but I think that type of fishing is done for now. I looked at the forecast and there are no days above freezing for 10 days! It looks like it is finally time to get an ice season going again. I’m going to be at the NOVI ULTIMATE FISHING SHOW next weekend for Clam Outdoors and I hope anyone who is there will stop by the booth and say hello. You’ll also want to check out one of this winters Ice Team digital magazine articles for some familiar faces (here is the magazine link). If you like the cold frozen water it is time to get excited!