Muskegon Lake Ice Fishing Report
The struggle continues out on Muskegon Lake. The good news is there are some fish out there but you are going to have to work for them. This is absolutely not a year to hunker down and leisurely go to work. Getting them this year means coming home exhausted after every trip and constantly staying on the move.
The strategy that has been working the best for us is finding a school of perch out there in one of the basins. Then determining which direction it is going, how big it is, and drilling a crap ton of holes. From there moving around within the area allows you to surprise some fish and get bites. They’ve been negative and extremely finicky all winter out there. One thing we’ve noticed which may be a coincidence or not is that looking for white ice has been helpful. I don’t know if the little bit of extra darkness is something they like or what but we have seen it work multiple times. Clam speed spoons and The Drop XL’s have been working the best on the perch. We’ve just been tipping with spikes.
There are some true jumbos out there though with multiple fish over 13 caught this year and one that was just under 14. The latest area we’ve found has some really nice walleyes moving around too. It is awesome to be able to determine the size and species of fish with the Helix 7. The excitement level when one of those walleyes rolls through definitely goes up. There are some cisco mixed in as well and I think we have hooked over 10 of those this year. It will be really interesting to see how the genetic and stable isotope work on them goes.
With the perch bite not being super fun we’ve definitely been exploring a bit more. We’ve found an epic number of catfish and might have to experiment on getting them to bite well. It really could be a lot of fun! We’ve also found a new pod of walleyes but they haven’t been easy to get to bite. I still have a lot to learn about those guys on ice. It is tough to really figure it out with such a small bite window. Going to keep at it though and hopefully figure it out.