Grand Lake, MI

[Bender]

Last Wednesday evening we hooked up the boat and headed 4 hours north for a 4 day fishing trip on Grand Lake, a 5,600 acre smallmouth lake located on the northeastern part of the lower peninsula.
We didn't arrive at our rental house until very late so three of us decided to stay up through the first night and launch at first light. I tried fishing a nice break with a brand new River2Sea deep diving jerkbait. First cast and crank it down, tick-tick, WHAM I layed into the fish hard and came up empty. The basstard broke my PowerPro and took my lure! I tied on a X-Rap deep and worked the break with nothing and headed in to pick up my sleeping partner. We hit many other points and I picked up a couple 2 to 3 pounders dragging a stickbait and my partner whacked a big one on a jerkbait:




We measured it and on the forum's calculator it was 6.2 some pounds. After no more fish here we moved into the bay and saw cruising bass all over the place. My partner was still working a jerkbait and I picked up a couple cruisers on a stickbait and decided to try a drop shot with our NemesiS goby. The water was only about 3 feet deep but I thought maybe if it was in front of their face it would work better and it did. Soon Brian was throwing the drop shot also and we were both getting fish when he noticed what looked a little like beds, but were just dark spots. Brian is a pretty good bed fisher having been a backseater in a tournament in SC with Terry Scroggins bed fishing. Soon enough it was on and in several hours we caught over 100 fish between us. I have never seen anything like it, we caught so many fish that our hooks got dull! We called the other guys on the trip and told them to get back in there so soon enough there 6 boats in there. My biggest was in the mid 4 pound range, I just couldn't get a big one:






and a lot of the fish had strange black spots on them like a cow:



The next day we tried to find new spots for fish and only picked up about 15 fish for the whole day, with Brian getting the big one again! Mine in this pic is a solid 3.5 pounds:



On Saturday morning the wind was really whipping and there were 3-4 footers on the main lake. We took a drive south and fished a couple of other bays without a fish. It was very rough and we speared a wave. You don't want to do that with water temps in the upper 50s and the wind at 30+ MPH and air in the mid 40s, it is COLD! We went into the house for a while and it calmed down later so we headed back out. I picked up a 4.21 (by the forum calc.) and that was our big one for the day. We had only about 20 fish for the day with most in the 2-3 pound range.

Finally on Sunday morning we got up and it was even more windy. We made the run from our house to the boat launch and got out of there without spearing any waves. Overall it was a great weekend and my first time to experience one of the great lakes of northern Michigan.

A few more pics: