D&R Muskegon Lake 2023 - Practice
Long gone are the days of heading to the lakeshore with 5 flipping sticks rigged up and a search for the right coontail patch. I sure hope that comes around someday again but until then we just have to get creative and try a lot harder. I have barely been out on Muskegon since Memorial Day. Once for a Monday night event, once with the family for panfish, and one trip out graphing. From that limited time, I knew we’d have to get creative and that it wasn’t going to be easy.
After we took our beating on White Lake on Saturday, I got up bright and early to put in a half day on Muskegon. I was going to spend a lot of time behind the wheel but I was also going to check a few grass spots too. Things started off quick as I found a grass spot right away and then caught a 4 pounder off a community hole. I also shook one off in a nice clump I’d side imaged. All the talk I had heard was that the bite was going to be tough. I was relieved that it seemed like things had turned around and they were biting. The boat traffic got unbearable early afternoon and it was time to head home and hang out with the ladies. I probably missed a few things hurrying up to get out of there but by the time it was all said and done things were looking good. I had 20+ places I felt really good about and 18 and change on the day. I didn’t catch a ton of the right ones and that 4 pounder off the community hole definitely doesn’t count. But I did get bites off all of those places and I had hope that even if just a couple of them fired with the right ones we would be ok.
We needed another trip though to sort out some of the grass beds. My favorite thing to do is to just have 10 acres of grass and sort through all of it. That just isn’t possible anymore with the lack of good coontail in the lake. The wind was also unbearable on this practice day. I prefer to go any day other than the day before the tournament since it is a lot less efficient with other guys in the way practicing. Well that collided with the wind and almost the rain. Luckily the storms all went to the north of us and we just had a sprinkling. The wind crushed us though and we didn’t get to look at a lot of things we wanted to. We were so desperate for places to fish at the end of the day that we even fished inside fisherman’s landing cut. It was my birthday and I wasn’t ready to go home!
Getting bites was no big deal and we’d poked around in the grass and also experimented with a few things. Nothing was really solid but we had several places that we thought could deliver a fast start with maybe a nice fish or 2. At the end of the day we had probably put 14lbs in the boat but no really big ones. Snatching a nice flathead catfish was my highlight of the day, it was just a baby compared to other flatheads but they are always a nice surprise. I didn’t really feel great about Thursday’s practice but it was nice having what I found on Sunday in our back pocket. None of that stuff was proven though and things could go either way. Maybe we smash all the big ones and win or maybe we push that stuff and catch lots of fish with none of the right ones. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened. But one thing we don’t have a problem doing is totally trashing practice and just fishing.
There was a particular grass bed that really offered a fast start opportunity but it was also highly likely we’d need a good boat number to get it. Fingers crossed we would get that on Saturday and it would all go according to plan.