I had the pleasure today of fishing with Barry Ewing and his brother Chris. Both have actually fished Little Bay de Noc quite extensively. They have had some good days. And they have had some very bad days. And todays trip was more of a class on the water to help them have more good days. We started out by fishing for "eaters" at the north end of the bay near Center Reef. I showed them some of the finer points to trolling with planer boards, bottom bouncers, and spinners tipped with nightcrawlers. The one thing they picked up right away was how much slower I was trolling than they usually do. I have found the best overall trolling speed for spinners tipped with crawlers to be 1 mph. They also saw how important the "tattle flags" on the boards can be as we caught fish simply from seeing the flags move just a little bit indicating a bite. These light bites would go unnoticed without using the flags. And then you would wonder why you have no bait on your lure when you checked it. Anyway, we caught about 20 throwbacks and 6 keepers while fishing for "eaters". We then switched gears and headed for deeper water to troll with leadcore line and crankbaits. Well, the big fish din't want to cooperate as well as the eaters. We caught one more keeper of about 22 inches. But did lose a big walleye close to 9 pounds. Also caught a couple 30 inch pike and a huge Sheepshead. But they learned a couple new "big fish spots" and hopefully the two brothers can put this new knowledge to good use in future trips.
