Another great day on the Detroit River

[spartannation]

The weather man said windy and rainy, not good weather for building a deck, so I asked vbottom if he wanted to make a trip down to Trenton to fish the Detroit and catch a few walleye. Of course he said yes. Windy and rainy is good weather for catching walleye! We met up with Jeff's uncle Billy and launched at Elizabeth park about 7 a.m., motored just down stream, dropped the trolling motor and before I got my jig to bottom Billy had a walleye on. To say that the bite was hot would be an understatement. We had our 3 man limit of 18 walleye in just over an hour along with some white bass, one sucker and a tail hooked carp. When you have 4 hours travel time there and back, you hate to quit after an hour fishing so we spent the next two hours catching and upgrading. I wanted some white bass for a fish fry so after 3 hours we moved closer to shore and caught a few. By a few I mean 29 (all males) with a several being just shy of the 16" needed to make master angler. By 11:00 we'd had enough of the rain so we put the boat on the trailer and headed home with two coolers of fish on ice.

For those who have never fished the Detroit River I'll try to explain the process. You're drifting with the current at >< 2 mph over 25-50 feet of water, some of it loaded with snags, bouncing a 3/4 oz-1 oz jig on bottom. The jigs are tipped with live minnows, 4' rubber worms or plastics that imitate minnows. I was fishing a hand tied feather jig that I made to match what Jeff killed them with last week, brown and yellow. Most will add a stinger hook, a treble on a short piece of heavy mono and cinched on the jig hook and trailed behind or inserted into the bait to help catch the short strikers. You use the trolling motor to slow the boat speed (or speed it up depending on wind speed and direction) to match your jig speed and keep your line as vertical as possible. Sometimes the bite is obvious, a slam or a tick. Sometimes they bite on the fall and your line goes slack. Sometimes there's weight when you lift. Sometimes they don't bite and are foul hooked and have to be returned to the river, there is no snagging allowed. The whole time you're drifting and jigging you're also dodging other boats and fighting cross winds and wakes from other boats. Lots of fun when you get it dialed in!

Here are a few pictures that Jeff took with one of the jig I was using, enjoy.