Muskegon Lake D&R - Part 1
Enough of the waiting it was time for tournament day (this is a long one so it’s coming in 2 parts). The most noticeable thing when arriving at the ramp was the wind. It was blowing and it was forecasted to be SW all day which is the absolute worst for Muskegon Lake. I didn’t really think it was going to be all that bad but I was wrong.
I’d settled on where to start and was hopeful for a good boat number. We drew boat 21 and I was happy with that. I was going to have to drive past some good stuff to get where I wanted to go but I was confident even if other boats were in the area I could start on something good. The ride was a little bumpy but not too bad. We were starting on some deep weeds and had high hopes. I would not have been surprised to catch a really good bag right there. However things had changed big time. I was shocked to have flipped the first 10 minutes without a bite. We finally got bit and it was just a small dogfish. Not really a great sign to start the day. About a half hour in we finally got bit again. Trevor set the hook and was struggling to move this fish. It was one of those “if this is a bass, it’s a big one” moments. I half expected to just see a monster pike and it looked like that for a second because this fishes head was so dang big. 5 pounder in the boat to start the day on Muskegon? YES PLEASE! At that point it was just 4 more bites and we would definitely do well enough to get team of the year. We kept grinding in the grass since we caught a 5 pounder in the tournament and the only bite we set the hook on in practice was a 4 ¾. It just wasn’t clicking, even when we mixed it up with some reaction baits. Having one in the box gave us some confidence to check the smallmouths we really knew nothing about nearby. They were on some hard bottom and scattered wood but we could never get one to fire.
We were probably an hour and a half in at this point and it was time to pull the plug and go fish some other good stuff. Our next spot was a mixed bag area that had both sand and grass. We hooked another fish that just wouldn’t come up. Eventually it just came off and we will never know how big it actually was. It certainly acted like a good smallmouth but they all feel pretty good on a spinning rod.
Back to more deep coontail and 2 areas we really had confidence in. Not a bite on either of them and we were sensing things had really changed. We could either die on our practice or switch things up. At this point it was around 10 and we still had that one giant in the livewell. We just needed to catch some keepers and get back on track. We headed to a wall that has bailed me out so many times. In fact I often never pass this place up if there is no one fishing it. I’m sure several boats had already fished it today but they just rotate in and out of there all the time. We got a solid fish there and some confidence that some of the stuff we’d been saving would bail us out. We hit a very specific structure piece next that we were counting on but I think it was simply just too rough there.
We had to quickly check 2 more coontail spots that were absolutely loaded in practice. The weeds were destroyed in both of them and it was incredibly rough. Nothing firing on flipping what was left or a reaction bite. It was time to pull the plug on everything that was good in practice and initiate scramble mode. We had a couple flipping spots that were calm and the hope was maybe those fish were unaffected. They were also nearby some other rock, wood, and steel that can be good for keepers. We poked around some steel that usually gives up a 2 pounder. I was definitely feeling the pressure to get some fish in the boat and it was just fishing for bites. We were about to get one of those bites in that area. I felt a little slack line poke and set the hook into what felt like an immovable object. Our suspicions of it being a giant were confirmed pretty quickly when it surfaced. After a few tense moments it hit the net and the pressure was off. I was certain we had team of the year with just these 3 fish but we needed to go for the throat and win this thing. A couple minutes later we added another keeper, it was just barely over 14 but it felt good to have it. We then went and fished the grass we intended to and it surrendered no bites.