Small lake, big success

Summertime in Michigan means busy launches on the weekends. The only way to avoid the chaos is to fish the popular lakes during the week or find small lakes, that pleasure boaters avoid, to fish on the weekends. I've been slammed with work so week day fishing is off the table for now leaving plan B our only option. Sunday Jeff(vbottom) and I picked a small lake on the Eaton/Calhoun county line. As usual we were trolling 1/16 oz jigs with a variety of plastics, mostly Crappie Magnet Slab Curlys but also Sliders and others. First trip around the lake was to find the weed edges and lay a track for later and produced a few small crappie. Once Jeff got the edge figured out we were able to dial in on certain stretches that seemed to be holding more fish. The weeds started at 10' and came nearly to the surface so we tried to stay in the 12' range running our jigs as close to the weed edges as possible. As the sun got higher the bite picked up and the quality of fish got better, nothing huge but lots of 9"-10" fish, and I do mean lots. We picked up some bigger fish as well but the vast majority were 9-10. The big surprise of the day was what I thought was a decent bass but ended up being a master angler crappie. The best part of the day was that we had the lake to ourselves most of the day and later had to share it with 3 kayakers, 2 pontoons and a row boat. Me thinks we found a new weekend honey hole. All fish were released to be caught another day.