- Well, hey everybody.

Welcome to "Michigan Out of Doors."

Thank you so much for joining us this week.

We've got a brand new show for you.

And our own Jordan Brown was recently able to spend an entire weekend at a Michigan Walleye Tour tournament in Alpena just a few weeks back.

They had a great time, lots of good fish.

You won't want to miss this week's show.

I'm Jimmy Gretzinger.

It's time for "Michigan Out of Doors."

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(mellow music) (sparks sizzle) (gun fires) (upbeat music) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) - [Jimmy] Last month, the Michigan Walleye Tour was in Alpena for their fourth and final regular season tournament of the year, and had cameras rolling for the two-day event.

With nearly a hundred boats in the field and perfect weather in the forecast, it was shaping up to be a great weekend on the water.

(engine revving) - Hi, Chris Ross here.

We are boat 43 here, just got done with a long run north.

Just put the trolling motor down.

Kind of a little different weather than what we thought we were going to be looking at.

Really flat right now.

We're hoping for a little bit of a breeze, kind of get some chop on the water.

They seem to slow down a bit once it's real calm like this.

So hoping to run in some fish here.

We're not really our first spot here.

We've marked a couple.

A lot of bass mixing as well, but go through some water here and hopefully find some fish.

- Yep, yep, ready?

There we go, boys.

- There we go, good start.

- First four pounder in the boat.

Right under the boat.

- This year, what we're fishing with is a quarter ounce Widow Maker tungsten jig.

Good shiny nickel finish to it.

Super sharp hooks.

These things have been incredible as far as they're sticking up and landing percentages.

So something we we trust in, and a lot of the national walleye tour guys are also starting to use them, so great jig to have on board.

Pre-fishing, we did work some plastics.

We kind of stick with on game day what we're confident and comfortable with.

Usually Rande, will have a plastic on using a split tail.

Getting that reaction bite.

And if they don't go to that, I'll go down with the finesse fishing with the jig and crawler.

However, yesterday things did kind of change.

We noticed they were attacking the crawler a little more than the plastic.

So right now we're starting out with what we know.

They're going to probably go after right away, especially on a day like today where we got to finesse fish them a little bit.

And also just, you know, if it's around that 20 to 15 foot of water, if we have a hard splash, it seems to spook them a little bit.

So we're trying to be real light with our cast, and kind of keep it real finesse light.

- Yep.

Here we go, that's four.

- That's four of them.

Another four pounder.

- That's good.

- You know, over this week we probably checked 60 different humps.

And some of them are the same and some of them aren't.

What you're looking for is like that basketball size boulder, which you can kind of see on your graph.

It's just little, little humps on the bottom, and that's going to be your basketball size boulder.

And that seems to hold more gobies, and the smelt also like to hang around there because they're out, you know, eating any type of bugs, or plankton or anything like that that's in the water hanging out here too.

The walleye just kind of seem to follow all that bait, and if it's all congregated onto one spot, that's where the walleye's going to go because it's easy.

Wait, wait, wait.

There you go.

All right, biggest fish today.

And he came off.

Woo.

And he came off.

Hang on, hang on.

- Everything on tip there.

- [Rande] All right, that one's over five.

- [Angler] Woo.

Good job.

(gentle music) - We're at the fourth stop of the Michigan Walleye Tour.

We're sitting in second place for team of the year.

We've won it the last two years.

So hopefully we can move up a spot.

That'd be awesome.

But there's a little bit of a gap.

We need 20 points to make up and that's not easy to do.

So yeah, we're going to keep grinding it here and see what we can do.

We're at 13.

- Nice job.

Thank you, sir.

- [David] All right.

One in the boat.

We've been fishing for about an hour this morning.

We've got five fish in the well for roughly about 14, 15 pounds.

One good one.

We're hoping to get a couple more good ones out of here and see how it stacks up after the first day.

So yeah, we got a long ways to go yet today and they're snapping this morning, so hopefully we can keep, keep them coming in here.

- Here they come.

Two of them.

Slow down a little bit.

Here comes another one.

Comes down, you got them.

Fish, Dave.

- Yep.

- [Angler 2] Coming up over the top.

Coming up over the top of you.

- Which side?

- [Matt LaFreniere] You're good, you're good.

Relax.

Fish is a hundred feet away.

- [David] It's a walleye.

- There's three, four other ones here.

Hang on.

Let me try to get.

Nice to have a limit before eight o'clock.

Now we're just trying to upgrade.

So they're getting a little finicky though as high sun's starting to get to them, I think.

So we'll see.

Got it.

Definitely feels bigger.

Other side.

- So it's nine o'clock.

We still have our five.

I think pretty soon we're gonna skedaddle here because we're kind of in the nursery still.

So we got one good one.

The rest of them are, hopefully we don't have to weigh them.

They're two pounders, class.

We're using jig and crawler mostly.

We've got other swim baits ready.

We've got jigging raps ready.

So just we'll switch it up.

Mostly it's jig and crawler though.

- [Rande] Man, he come shooting down like a rocket.

He's probably following it still.

Oh, there he is.

(rod whirs) (water sloshes) - [Shaun] Definitely an upgrade though.

- It's an upgrade though.

- Yeah.

- [Rande] Oh yeah, that's a thick one.

- That's gonna be pushing five and a half to- - Yeah, that'd be five and a half.

That might be our biggest.

What I like about the Michigan Walleye Tour is, I mean, it's just ran so smoothly.

You know, you get your texts for your start time, your return time.

Launching the boat in the mornings, I mean, that team is just flawless.

Staff is great.

The weigh in's awesome.

They live stream.

It's another thing.

You know, some of these tournament don't livestream, you know, unless you get on more of the national level.

And honestly, I mean, there's a lot of these national guys that are starting to compete in this Michigan Walleye Tour.

They just like how it's ran, and they like the areas that they visit.

That's another thing too.

I mean, every area the Michigan Walleye Tour visits is, you know, a fish catching area.

I mean, and they're beautiful.

Yep, that's the right, that's the right kind.

Ready?

Oh, he's gonna go on another run.

Once he sees the boat.

This one's over six.

- Yep, should be.

- Just don't want to rush him.

- Oh.

- Ready?

- Yep.

- There we go.

- There we go, boys.

- Good job.

- Let's go.

(Rande laughs) - Great fish.

- [Rande] That one's over seven.

Bam.

Right there, boys, that's the kicker we needed.

That puts us at 28, maybe 29.

Not real long, but that is one fat fish.

(Rande laughs) - You don't get that one, I'd be surprised.

You got him?

Yeah, you got him.

Net.

- Yep, gotcha.

- [Matt LaFreniere] Hang on.

I gotta make another cast real quick.

- [David] Yep, no problem.

All right, you're gonna have to switch sides here, yep.

- Yeah, we made a move.

We delved some deeper structure, a little north of where we were, and we got, I think we got two upgrades out here already.

Now, we're just kind of picking through them, see what we can figure out, you know?

Try to get lucky and get that unicorn, you know?

We gotta definitely have some more weight.

We don't have enough weight right now, for sure.

But good thing this is a two-day event.

It's a walleye, it's a walleye.

It's a nice one too.

That's an upgrade.

- So, what is it, about a little afternoon now and we've got five fish.

We got rid of four of them that we caught in the first hour, but nothing much.

They're only like one pound upgrade, so we're probably sitting around 18 pounds or so.

So, looking for a good bite to get us back in the hunt a little bit better.

- [Matt LaFreniere] Looks like a four pounder.

- Nice, or better.

- Yeah.

- Yes, sir.

- That's a heavy one there.

That's five pounds, bro.

That's our heaviest.

- [David] Okay, got it.

Nice job, Matt.

- What'd you just say?

- 5.5 20 pounds, 5 ounces.

- Heck yeah.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Our winners last month will weigh in back to back.

Defending championship winners and now currently in fifth place with a basket over 30 pounds.

Rande, Chris, and Shaun, great fishing boys.

- [Jimmy] For this tournament, each boat weighs their five biggest walleye.

And day one yielded eight bags over 30 pounds, including one bag that tipped the scales at almost 40 pounds.

Nearly an eight pound average.

With similar weather forecasted for day two, all eyes were on the first placed team to see if they could duplicate an incredible day one.

- 39.20.

Wow, wow, wow, what a basket.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - So, day two here in Alpena, Michigan.

Had a really, really, really good day yesterday.

We had 39 pounds.

We're gonna go out and look for, 30 is the goal.

We feel like if we can do 30 pounds, there's a pretty good chance we're gonna come away with it.

We just gotta keep our heads down.

Conditions are gonna be tough.

Flat, calm, sunny.

So, it's not gonna be easy, but we're gonna go out there and give it our best.

- We're on day two.

We're sitting in second place with 32.39.

Fourth stop of the tour in Alpena.

And we're hoping that we can go out and recreate what we did yesterday.

We're on a casting program, live scope, and hopefully the fish cooperate.

Like I said, the fish always makes the last decision, so we're gonna do what we can do.

(engine revving) - Well, we had a great day yesterday.

Just a unbelievable day, really, for Lake Huron.

And we're trying to back it up with another 30 pound bag here.

We're just casting it some, we're casting and popping jigs at these walleyes that are holding on rock structure, and it's been a great week.

We've really gotten into some fish and we've had a really consistent weather pattern for a long time, which is kind of key to this bite.

You know, the fish are pretty shifty around here, but things have held pretty solid for quite a while.

And today looks like it's a good day.

We started out just bang, bang, and just looking for some upgrades here.

It's gonna be an awesome, awesome afternoon here.

So weather's calm.

We got a light breeze, which is helping us out a little bit.

And fish are feeding for sure.

So hopefully we can come in with another big bag.

Back it up like from yesterday, so.

- That's a fat one.

- That's a fat little guy, isn't he?

- He just too short.

- Awesome.

- Good job, Erich.

- Thanks.

- Feeding primarily on gobies.

And it's just, they're on this rock structure.

Like I said, they get shifty.

They'll move out, you know, shallower water, deeper water north and south, and you just kind of got to play the wind.

This time of year, there's fish all the way from, all the way through the whole system, to be honest with you, all the way from the straits to down to Saginaw.

It's just where are those bigger fish.

And right now, this time of year, this is where the bigger fish tend to be through this whole stretch.

So you know, there, like I said, there's also a smelt pattern offshore, a little deeper.

Guys control and some big bags come doing that as well, but our best look has been casting this week for sure.

So that's what we're doing.

Yes.

- That's a good one.

Six pounder.

Six pounder, that'll work.

- Five and a half.

- I think he's six.

- [Erich] That's all we need though.

- Michael, Mike.

- What?

- Good job, brother.

Good cast.

Yeah, we're seeing some fish, catching some fish.

We don't quite have the size that we want.

We got two good ones.

We need to upgrade three for sure, but no, everything's going good.

A little behind schedule from what we were yesterday, but we got a long day today and we're gonna just keep our heads down, and stay focused, and not get complacent, and roll through our little milk around the spots that we have and just keep covering water.

That's been the name of the game.

We didn't get married to a spot at all during pre-fish.

We just kept moving, and moving, and moving, and we're finding a lot of success all pre-fish doing that.

So we're gonna translate that right into today.

Just keep moving and covering new water and hopefully we run across five of the right ones.

- Good job, bro.

- Six something.

One hop.

Pink.

- [Erich] Bang, what up with that thang?

(group laughs) - [Mike] Let's do this, let's do this.

- My name is David VanDriessche.

It's the fourth stop of the Michigan Walleye Tour in Alpena, day two.

We're sitting in second place.

We had a great day yesterday.

Only 20 minutes into the morning this morning, so don't have any fish in the boat yet, but we're hoping.

Looks like they're still here.

We're seeing some on live scope.

So hopefully at some point here, they'll start to bite.

We'll get them to cooperate so.

Yesterday we were probably not even quite here yet because we were, flights were reversed so.

Ready for them to start biting anytime.

Come on, baby.

Oh.

(water sloshes) All right, we're good, we're good.

Yes.

(water sloshes) Woo.

Good job, captain.

Holy moly.

That's what we need.

- We had a good day yesterday.

Caught 32 pounds and some change.

Got a couple of the right ones, so we're trying to do it again today.

I've been fishing the MWT since 2015, so I guess 11 years.

It's crazy how fast that's gone.

My dad's been fishing a little bit longer.

We used to fish some small local tournaments when I was younger.

So I've been doing tournaments for, I don't know, 20 years probably now so.

This is a great tour, gets you to see a lot of the state that you don't normally see, and fish a lot of areas that you wouldn't normally fish, and learn a lot, compete against, you know, the best guys around.

So we'll see how we end up at the end of the day here.

(upbeat music) - The amount of technology in the last, you know, 10 years, 15 years is just amazing.

And you know, there's, you know, everybody's live scope, live scope.

I do a lot of stuff with side scan, identifying, you know, the right size rock, rock piles, transitions, and stuff like that.

That's the key to finding these fish.

Especially when they're on a gobie bite, right?

The gobies really kind of tend to congregate the most in the rocks.

And you find that bigger rock, you know, where there's a transition area and you can locate those fish.

They're not, there's so much structure here.

You know, just because you find something that looks good doesn't mean it's going to hold fish, but once you stick a few and you're seeing some fish, generally that pattern's going to kind of hold a little bit.

You know, it's, you know, like I said, years of experience kind of tell me what to look for here.

And it translates to other bodies of water like Green Bay and, you know, up in Escanaba, and all that stuff too.

So it's a same kind of deal.

But that's kind of how I do it and it's different.

Sometimes it's an offshore fishery where they're targeting smelt and things like that.

But right now it's a gobie bite, so that's what we're looking for.

- [Austin] There's a couple.

- [Erich] Yeah, baby.

Yeah, nice fish, nice fish.

- Good fish, fellas.

- Solid fiber.

- Upgrade, hey.

- Attaboy.

- As you can see, I mean, it's like fishing an aquarium up here.

So we're using this live scope.

We're ranging it out at 150 feet, and it's allowing us to make cast.

There's another one right there.

You can see them coming in at like 130 feet.

It's allowing us to make super, super long, precise casts on fish that you know, we, they're not super concentrated here, so they're super scattered.

So if you were to blindfish one of these spots, I'm not saying it can't be done blind fishing, but it just would, it's all about being efficient, tournament fishing.

So it's a lot more efficient to be able to run through an area, and not pick out the obvious targets.

You know, we might miss some fish, but we might miss some, but it's just all about being efficient.

And so we're just using this to range way out, and look way out and pick out targets, and make accurate casts on them.

And we're putting them in the boat.

- [Erich] Oh yeah, that's a good one.

- Come to daddy.

- Yeah, baby.

- Come to daddy.

Once again, a special day up here in Alpena.

All the hard work paid off.

I was up here a couple weeks ago with Erich in the Night Eyes.

He was teaching me a lot about Alpena and how to fish these fish.

And the amount of knowledge that I've learned from these guys is absolutely amazing.

Let's see where we're at, boys.

(bright music) Wow, that might've just did her.

That might've just did her, boys.

29.3.

- [Matt Kirsammer] Feels a little too strong for a walleye.

It's a walleye.

- Looks like one.

(bright music) (water sloshes) - Yes.

Fell out in the nuts.

Oh, midday here.

We got five in the box.

Need to get a couple more upgrades.

We got one real nice one, but still got some work to do, so we'll see.

- There you go.

- Looks kind of dark.

- - [Matt Kirsammer] Looks dark.

That's a walleye.

- [Dan] It's getting heavier.

(water sloshes) - Oh, yeah.

(Matt Kirsammer laughs) Nice work.

- Yes, sir, yes, sir.

Come on.

That's a six pounder.

- Got a couple hours left of fishing.

Doing pretty good.

I think we're at about 28 pounds.

So we're pretty thrilled with that.

Hoping to upgrade a few more here in the last hour or so.

So we'll see how it goes.

- [Dan] He's long, man.

I went out for him.

Got him.

Yeah, I think so too.

He doesn't feel very big.

Keep going.

I'll mess with the fish.

- He did not feel very big.

- [Dan] He looked long.

Like I was like.

6.45.

- Yes.

- Belly up - Broke the six barrier.

- [Dan] We had a good day.

Can't complain at all.

Went through a ton of fish.

Caught the biggest fish we've caught all week, so we'll see, see how we end up.

With a 39 pound bag yesterday, it's gonna be, let's say, 70.

But hopefully it's less than that, and that's what we got in our box, but we'll see.

We didn't tank.

We did what we wanted to do, so we'll see how everybody else did.

- [Announcer] Boat number 71.

32.39 yesterday.

Matt Kirsammer, Dave VanDriessche, Dan Kirsammer.

They need 30.63 to take the lead.

Matt's gonna put a big basket on the scale.

33.98, wow.

Yesterday's leader with 39.2 pounds.

Mike Dickerson, Erich Carlson, Austin Tomasek.

They had 39.20 yesterday, they need 27.18 today to take the lead.

27.18.

What do we got?

(audience cheering) 31.12.

70.32 pounds.

Wow, we got to 70.

Way to go, boys.

Congratulations.

Wow, what a weekend.

- [Jimmy] An incredible weekend to be sure, in a great part of our state.

Thanks to the Michigan Walleye Tour for sharing some footage with us and for continuing to highlight the great walleye fishing destinations we have right here in Michigan.

(bright music) - Well, special thanks to Jordan for bringing us that story.

If you'd like to see the full-blown edit on that, you can check out the Michigan Walleye Tour on YouTube.

Lots of good stuff there.

And make sure you are joining us over the next several weeks.

Lots of brand new stuff coming.

And this time of year, I tell you what, get out and enjoy everything our state has to offer.

And if we don't see in the woods or on the water, hopefully you'll see you right back here next week on your PBS station.

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(upbeat music) ♪ When I wander far away ♪ A dream stays with me night and day ♪ ♪ It's the road that leads to my home state ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ Changing seasons paint the scene ♪ ♪ Like rainbow down in a hidden stream ♪ ♪ The white tailed deer in the tall pine trees ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man (bright music)